At 5:20 one recent morning, a naval officer in civilian dress stepped off a train at a fog-shrouded New England seaport and climbed into a waiting limousine. The car sped through the quiet streets and out into the misty countryside. A short while later, in a well-guarded brick building, the Navy man was speaking in harshly urgent tones to a handful of scientists and shipbuilders gathered around a conference table. The officer's name: Captain Hyman George Rickover. His job: to direct the building of the U.S. Navy's first atomic submarine.
By last week, Captain Rickover's task was a lot nearer completion than either the Navy or the tight-lipped Atomic Energy Commission would admit officially. The Pentagon released a curt, one-sentence statement saying that it had awarded a contract for an atomic sub to the Electric Boat Co. of Groton, Conn. "From now on," said an AEC director, "you can gauge our progress by the increase in vagueness of our reports."
The work was, in fact, well along. Day & night for the past five years, 51-year-old Captain Rickover, an engineering officer since he graduated from Annapolis in 1922, had been working with single-minded concentration on the atomic submarine.
Up Through Channels. The battle was frequently bitter, always uphill. At first, the Navy was coolly indifferent, more interested in relaxing from the last war than preparing for a new one. Rickover badgered his superiors until they began to listen, slowly working his way up through Pentagon channels. By 1947, Rickover had convinced Admiral Chester Nimitz; the Navy declared an atomic submarine "militarily desirable."
Rickover next took his plans to the
Atomic Energy Commission. Since the publication of the Smyth report in 1945, the world has known that controlled fission reaction is possible in an atomic pile, releasing heat slowly over a long period of time. If a safe and economical way to harness this heat to a steam turbine could be devised, it would be an ideal propulsion unit for a submarine. Rickover persuaded the AEC to begin work on a pilot model.
Armed with a top priority, Rickover gathered a staff of bright young officers with a mathematical bent, went with them to the AEC's giant Oak Ridge plant for an atomic refresher course. His engineers and sub men pored over old Annapolis manuals and textbooks on steam turbines, rigged one up, and started figuring ways to hitch it to an atomic boiler. In Washington, the Bureau of Ships began designing a thick new hull to hold the new engine.
Word of Captain Rickover's project started buzzing discreetly through the fleet. Here & there, carefully screened sub officers were called to Washington for an interview with Rickover. A hand-picked few were sent up to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a three-year course in subjects relevant to atomic engines.
The Final Go-Ahead. From M.I.T., Rickover's students went to an AEC testing station at Arco, Idaho, to study the new engine. Then, a few days before the Korean war broke out last year, Rickover got a final go-ahead from Admiral Forrest Sherman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In