(4 of 9)
During World War II, many new devices (e.g., radar) were adopted and developed to great refinement by the Navy. After the war, the Navy tended to settle in the just-established pattern. Rulers of the roost in the doctrine of the Navy were the carrier-borne airmen, who had fought spectacularly in the war in the Pacific. Far down in the list of the Navy's seagoing establishment were the submarines. They had played a vital part in the Pacific war, but they seemed to have little purpose against a potential enemy without much ocean commerce.
The pattern did not include the most revolutionary novelty; nuclear propulsion. It was still untried; indeed, it seemed far in the future, and the peacetime promotion system did not favor the quick rise of brilliant men with vision enough to prepare for the battles of the distant future.
Villainous Battery. Rickover had a vision. At Oak Ridge, he and his little command of four eager young officers painfully fought their way through mathematical entanglements to the strongholds where dwelt the atom. They came to the conclusion that the Navy, to remain a vital fighting force, must have nuclear propulsion, and that the logical place to apply it first was in submarines.
Rickover had graduated from the Submarine School at New London, Conn., and spent three of his seagoing years as a peacetime submarine officer. Well he knew the "pigboats" and well he knew that hated villain, the storage battery, that each submarine carries in its belly. When a submarine dives (as it must in action), all it has for propulsion is electric motors turned by the limited energy stored in the battery.
During peacetime maneuvers, a submarine swimming deep in the sea is at peace with the world. Though a storm may be roaring overhead, the ship does not roll or pitch. But during a wartime attack, the battery is a weak resource. Even when "fat" (fully charged), it is good for less than an hour at full speed.
The attack is made; the torpedoes hiss toward their victims. Then comes the bad moment. Down the white torpedo wakes race the enemy destroyers, the sharp pings of their sonars searching for the submarine. It dives for the depths, and then come the crashing depth charges.
If the submarine survives, there is a desperate, quiet cat & mouse game of search and evasion. If the submarine tries to escape at full speed, it will soon exhaust its battery. If it tries to save its battery by drifting slowly through the depths, the destroyers above may find it by sonar. Usually it compromises, moving at moderate speed as it twists and turns.
As the deadly game goes on, the chant of the battery man makes the crew's blood run cold. Every time he speaks, he reports a lower reading. Lights and fans are turned off to save trickles of current. The air grows hot and foul. When the battery's last charge is gone, the submarine must rise to the surface, perhaps to destruction.
A nuclear sub will be entirely different. It could swim submerged at full speed as long as desired. No destroyer could catch it. Rising quickly from the depths, it might even destroy destroyers.