A biographer of Admiral H. G. Rickover paints a gentler-than-normal picture of the Father of the Nuclear Navy, known by some, with tongue-in-cheek, as the kindly old gentleman.
In his Salt and Steel, Reflections of a Submariner (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999), Captain Edward L. Beach Jr. provides information about Admiral H. G. Rickover and the origins of the naval nuclear-- propulsion program. His account is important, because he was a participant in the events he describes and understood the significance of them as they were occurring. He also speculates about the career of Rickover in the submarine S-48, where Rickover served from 21 June 1930 until 5 June 1933.
Beach suggests that because the S-48 had a poor reputation, Rickover was assigned as executive officer to straighten her out. According to Beach, "Rickover was a perfectionist who drove everyone wild. His crew in the S-48, of which he was second in command, hated him." Beach also writes: "His treatment of everyone junior to him was demeaning." He harassed the crew unmercifully. "Under Rickover as exec, she became known as a madhouse." At the end of his tour in the S-48 Rickover applied for command of a submarine and did not get it. He was "surfaced," Beach writes, a "slap in the face to a submariner." Sources inaccessible to Beach offer a different interpretation.
As a member of the history division in the Atomic Energy Commission, I was assigned to Rickover's office to write historical studies of the joint Atomic Energy Commission-U.S. Navy nuclear-propulsion program. Several times, the admiral dropped into my office, just a few doors from his own, to talk. Occasionally, he spoke of his early career, including his duty in the S-48. These conversations always were brief, interrupted frequently by calls from his office, and were in no sense interviews, although I often scribbled short notes. I base the following on that documentation, along with entries from the log of the S-48, records at the National Archives, and transcripts of his letters to Ruth D. Masters, whom he married in October 1931. These letters are cited and quoted with the gracious permission of Eleonore B. Rickover, the admiral's second wife.
As Beach stated, the S-48 had a bad record. She sank on her builder's trials on 7 December 1921 (with no loss of life), and four years later, she ran aground twice during a heavy snowstorm while on her way to the Portsmouth Navy Yard. Because the damage was extensive, the submarine was decommissioned. When funds became available, the yard installed German-designed diesels and lengthened her by 25 feet, 6 inches. Recommissioned late in 1928, she resumed a trouble-filled service life. Rickover was not, however, assigned to the S-48 as executive officer to straighten her out.
The origin of his assignment goes back to his decision in 1929 to seek submarine duty after completing postgraduate work in electrical engineering at Columbia University. Wanting to catch up with his U.S. Naval Academy classmates, who were advancing in the Navy mainstream, he thought submarines offered the best chance at early command. Another reason for his decision could be that he had fallen deeply in love with Ruth D. Masters, a student at Columbia in international law. If he were accepted for submarine duty, he would attend the Submarine School at New London, Connecticut, near enough to New York that he could see her occasionally. And after graduating from the school, he might get assigned to a submarine operating out of New London.
His request was denied, however, because as a senior lieutenant, he was considered too old. But in the corridors of Main Navy, he ran into Captain Clarence S. Kempff, his former commanding officer in the battleship Nevada (BB-36) and an officer with whom he had served from June 1926 through April 1927. Kempff wrote in Rickover's last fitness report:
An exceptionally able and capable officer. High sense of duty and devoted to it. Excellent mind, a student and always improving himself. Has . . . initiative and industry. Trains his electrical force and educates them well, Has done excellent work in keeping a worn out plant in operating condition. An excellent character. Thoroughly honest and painstaking in all his work. Would be glad to have him with me again.
Kempff spoke up for him, and as a result, Rickover was sent to submarine school. In a class of 37 officers, he was one of two senior lieutenants.
The S-48, Lieutenant William R. Lorenz commanding, was at New London when Rickover reported as her new engineer. Available records do not show if Rickover was aware of her record. If not, two incidents soon taught him about her. The first occurred on 7 July 1930 on her four-hour full-power run on her diesels. Everything went wrong. To Ruth Masters, Rickover wrote: "Never in all my experience in the Navy have I had such a multitude of ill-starred events befall me." The second occurred on 15 September 1930, when a battery fire broke out while the S-48 was surfaced on Long Island Sound. As engineer, Rickover's job was to enter the battery compartment. It was, he said, "scary," because of the explosion risk. He found the cause to be old and deteriorating insulation. Rickover had not been on board long, when he observed in a letter on 2 August 1930 to Ruth:
I shall never be able to understand why officers cannot treat enlisted men as they would be treated themselves-- why they must be petty and abuse the privileges of their rank. It is all so needless. The men on this ship are of a very good type and more enthusiasm and work could be gotten out of them if some little consideration were shown them. I do not speak as a theorist. I have never seen a ship where there was as little spirit left in the men as there is on here. Initiative is discouraged.
On 2 March 1931 the S-48 arrived at Coco Solo, the submarine base on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal. It was a terrible place to be stationed, Rickover recalled. The temperatures soared in the submarine and humidity saturated bedding and clothing. "After a few minutes submerged all of us were reeking wet," he wrote. Conditions were not quite so bad among the Las Perlas Islands in the Gulf of Panama, where he swam and collected seashells with the men of the S-48. Such times gave relief from the continuing engineering problems.
He filled his letters to Ruth with descriptions of life in the submarine, about the books he was reading—when he had time—and his views on international law and his longing for marriage. He had little to say on one subject: his relationship with Lorenz. On 3 July 1931, however, he broke his silence.
You will never be able to imagine what I have gone through this last year with the Captain . . . . To have someone over you, finding fault every minute of the day, treating one like a servant (he treated all the officers and men that way) and not to be able to say anything in return. How many times this year have I been boiling and raging inside of me to think that I, who has a sensitive nature, should have to appear calm and be the recipient of constant insults from one so lacking in the qualities of leadership and decency.
. . . . Thank God it is over.
I used to dread going to sea with him—the constant nagging and fault-finding for no reason at all.
It was over when Lieutenant Olton B. Bennehoff relieved Lorenz on 6 July 1931, and Rickover became executive officer.
Unfortunately, the new captain, although highly intelligent, had a rigid outlook and also, Rickover recalled, could not get along with people. He nagged his officers constantly, interfered with their duties, and made fun of every idea any of his officers advanced. At least professionally, Rickover was making progress; on 4 August 1931 he qualified for submarine command.
On 8 October 1931 he married Ruth Masters at Litchfield, Connecticut. After a brief honeymoon in Northfield, Massachusetts, he returned to the S-48. His new wife came to visit him in January 1932, and it must have been a wonderful interlude. But after Ruth left, Rickover faced boredom. None of the officers had any intellectual interests. The arrival of Dr. F. A. Venig Meinesz, a noted geophysicist from the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands, broke the dullness when he came on board with two assistants on 4 February 1932.
His group was to measure anomalies of the earth's gravity in the Caribbean; he had used Dutch submarines in the Dutch East Indies for that purpose. Submerged and free from the effects of waves, a submarine was a stable platform to take measurements over a large area. To his great delight, Rickover found Meinesz intelligent and unassuming in "contrast with certain other people I know."
The pneumatic vent valves of the S-48 nearly ended the scientific expedition. Because they never had worked in proper sequence, the submarine usually took a 12 deg list when she submerged. One got used to it, Rickover recalled with a grin, but one never told about this trick to a visitor or someone just reporting on board. On 8 February 1932 she began a dive that suddenly took a downward angle of 20 deg. "It was scary," he recalled. Other officers wanted to send a message to the Navy Department, which all would sign, that the ship could not carry out her assignment. Rickover talked them out of it, arguing that the message would sully the reputation of them all. Instead, he devised another procedure for diving that took longer but did not carry the same risk.
After Meinesz and his assistants left, the same stale routine returned. Rickover and Bennehoff argued constantly. After Bennehoff blew up over some trivial incident, however, Rickover found him easier to get along with. The new attitude showed in the last fitness report Rickover received from Bennehoff. In a letter of 5 May 1933 Rickover described the report to Ruth:
It is surprising, (especially to me) how well I get along with Bennehoff now—probably because I have learned not to take him too seriously. I was surprised about two weeks ago when I saw the report of fitness which he sent to the Navy Department concerning me; it was very good. . . . Despite all the unpleasantness on the ship, I have tried my level best to make a good ship of the S-48, and spent much time and effort in training the crew. In January, when the ship was inspected by the Commander Submarine Force, U.S. Fleet, he stated in the Inspection Report that I was deserving of special credit for the high state of training of our crew. In addition to being required to be familiar with his regular duties, each man has also been required to study an educational course. This has been compulsory and if the assignments were not completed on time—the man was restricted to the ship and could not go ashore. I do feel, as I am about to leave the S-48, that she is a little better than she was when I became Executive Officer.
Quotes from Rickover's letters to his wife portray a situation that may be more complicated than Beach, with no other evidence, could suggest in Salt and Steel. Two other people who served with Rickover in the S-48 might provide more enlightenment.
Clayton Garvey, yeoman first class when Rickover was in the S-48, wrote Rickover a letter recalling the old days. Garvey operated the trim pump on the submarine. When I met him in San Antonio, Texas, in 1981, he said Rickover was good at keeping the S-48 in trim, which was not an easy job, because the ship was so sensitive. He recalled that Bennehoff was a hard man to deal with and greatly disliked by the crew. Rickover was tough, but the crew respected him. Garvey thought Rickover was lonely. He did not have any friends and stayed on board when other officers went ashore. Garvey did remember the change in Rickover while Meinesz was in the ship.
Rear Admiral William D. Irvin, who received the Navy Cross and the Bronze Star while commanding the Nautilus (SS-168) in World War II, recalled Rickover and the S-48 in his oral history conducted by the U.S. Naval Institute. As for her propulsion plant: "You could count on the 48 to be in trouble, no matter what we did." He remembered how Rickover and Bennehoff, both brilliant men, would argue constantly. Irvin:
. . . always found him [Rickover] most reasonable. He would listen when I had something to say. He didn't hesitate to counsel me because he was an old engineer, who knew what he was talking about. If I stood up and argued with him he'd say: `Now look, Bill, I've heard what you have to say but shut up and do what I said.' I would and it turned out invariably to be right. I used to get mad as hell at him but, on the other hand, I had a lot of respect for him. I thought he was fine. The men liked him too. He was much more reasonable than Bennehoff and in a number of cases he took the part of the men, so, of course they leaned to him.
He was a fine shipmate.
Rickover knew his duty in the S-48 would end in 1933; he just did not know when. He wrote to Ruth on 24 March 1932 that he had told Bennehoff he wanted duty in New London. Clearly, Rickover had consulted her. Bennehoff said he would approve the request. On 1 April Rickover wrote to his wife that he had talked to the squadron commander and believed he would put in a good word for him.
On 5 April, Rickover requested command of an "R"-class submarine operating out of New London. Bennehoff endorsed the request with a high recommendation but asked that Rickover not leave the ship before August. The S-48 was to undergo an overhaul and, with two officers leaving for postgraduate school, Rickover could not be spared. The commander of Submarine Division Five, stating that Rickover had done excellent work in the S-48, also approved Rickover's request. The commander of Submarine Squadron Three noted in his concurrence that Rickover was senior to two officers in the squadron who had been ordered to submarine command.
Why the request for an "R" submarine—an older class than the "S" boats—operating out of New London? In all probability the answer lies in the intense desire of Rickover and Ruth to continue their professional careers while married—a problem more familiar now than it was then. "R"-class submarines were used frequently at the submarine school. If he got command of one of them in New London, he and Ruth could be together more often.
But it did not work out the way they had hoped. The Bureau of Navigation informed Rickover on 28 May 1932 that: "It is not practicable to assign you to duty in command at this time."
He soon learned he was to go to Philadelphia as assistant to the Inspector of Naval Materiel. It would not be, he thought, bad duty. As it turned out, he found the work interesting, professionally rewarding, and best of all, providing him scope for exercising initiative—something he never had on the S-48.
Certainly Rickover demanded high performance in the S-48, but describing her as a "madhouse" and ascribing that condition to Rickover may be too strong. Fitness reports in those years asked if the work of the subject of the report had received either favorable or unfavorable comments. In his last report on Rickover, Bennehoff noted a commendation: "[M]ilitary inspection by Commander Submarine Force, U.S. Fleet. Commended for thoroughness in accomplishing the excellent state of training of the crew evidenced by their performance in the exercises held while underway." It seems doubtful that such results could be achieved by a crew that had been harassed and demeaned. In one note I took—one of the few I dated—on 24 June 1975, Rickover said that he never would have made out in the old submarine force. He remembered what the officers were like. They could not tolerate his desire for excellence—to get things done right. He had to get out. Perhaps that was the "slap in the face to a submariner."
Dr. Duncan is the author of Rickover and the Nuclear Navy, The Discipline of Technology (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990), and he is at work currently on a second Rickover book. He gratefully acknowledges the research and editorial assistance he received for this article from Mr. John M. Maloney.