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We had a problem over the construction of destroyers for the 1967 shipbuilding program. I think we were going to have four new destroyers with guided missiles, and we hadn’t built any real destroyers for a long time.
McNamara opposed the building of destroyers up to this point. He based his opposition on cooked-up studies which made the case for having more destroyer escorts to do the job of convoying across the Atlantic. We could get 50 DEs, but we couldn’t get any destroyers approved.
I think McNamara was opposed to carriers, in general, and opposed really to the idea of the Navy having an air role. He was Air Force oriented in that respect. Carriers were all right in a limited sense, but his position seemed to be: “Let’s not have too many of them and let’s have as few other ships to go with them as possible. The Navy’s real role is to convoy across the ocean, antisubmarine warfare.”
We did propose a program of four destroyers for the 1967 shipbuilding, and we were talking about this in 1965-1966. I recall Dave McDonald saying that he wanted to have a destroyer that we could afford to build and to have BuShips prepare the plans and estimates. We were talking about destroyers of about 3,500 tons, certainly not over 5,000, which could make 32, 33, .34 knots and carry guided missiles.
The Bureau of Ships proposed that these destroyers should have gas turbines and also that they should have a lightweight 5-inch gun, both of which were under development. Dave McDonald decided that we had too many untried things in these new ships. So the decision was made not to go for gas turbines on these particular ships because we wanted to be sure they were going to work. I agreed with Dave and all the operators to whom I talked did, too.
But the people in the Bureau of Ships got around to Nitze and Tom Davis, who was in the Office of Pro
gram Appraisal at the time, and they convinced Nitze that we were old fuds and that gas turbines should be put in these new destroyers. At that time there were no fully gas turbine- powered warships in the world. The British had one or two combined diesel-and gas-powered ships; and the Dutch had one. And there was a combined gas-and-gas turbine. But we didn’t have any marine gas turbines that had been really tested at sea in our country.
Of course, some of us thought the gas turbines were the wave of the future and that sooner or later we’d have nothing but gas turbine-powered ships. But at this time their great advantages—reduced personnel, easy replacement, fuel economy, flexibility, etc.—existed only in theory and
on paper, and had not been strated in operation. You have careful about buying unteste terns. You always take risks w there’s any improvement, but ^ thought was that we couldn 11 °r take that risk with the gas tur ^
We could afford to wait a coup
■ • the ne*1
years, perhaps, to put it in t £[lt
group of destroyers and exper* with a DE which we could aff°r sideline, if necessary. So 1 thoug Dave’s decision was very wise. j
However, the Bureau of Ships Tom Davis convinced Nitze to ahead with the gas turbines.
As I recall, Nitze called one 1X10 ^ ing and asked me to come over ^ chat. So off I went with J- Caldwell, who was Op-03 and resp ^ sible for the shipbuilding program' talk about destroyers. To my sur^j ;l the Chief of the Bureau of Ships an ^ couple of his experts, Tom ^aVlS’e think, and Nitze’s legal officer vV there to greet us. re.
The Bureau of Ships people sented their case for the gas tur 1
and J. B. and 1 opposed it for Pr‘
, . , The thlflp
cal operational reasons. u.
dragged on, and I kept raising ,
jections on the basis of the operat*
uncertainties of putting an un^f£,
system in the only new ships "'e ^
going to get of that type, ^^d
stroyers. The meeting finally tea ^
its climax with the following
change: u
Nitze: “Rivets, tell me why d ’
oppose this?” , aS
Rivero: “I don’t oppose the idea ^
turbines, Mr. Secretary. I think t^
are the wave of the future. But I c
we should try that on one of the j
which we have in the program- t
one out and put gas turbines m ^
unit. Then we can find out tvhat^^
problems are that would face us.
we’ve done that, then we’ll be a
122
Proceedings /
the confidence that we can put jjvJH ln destroyers, the more expen- th 6 which we have so few,
affo °neS comin£ forth. We can’t r to pull one of those out and ex- periI«ent with it."
Hitze; Hi
e- What would happen?” ero‘ Mr. Secretary, if we knew
at Would happen, we’d have a solu- non r ,
the \°Ut We "ave had experience in too f Vy &°inK ahead too far and ast on some of these new proin 1^'S w‘rhout proper operational test-
am i ^ ty,en Save a couP*e of exP es. When I first came into the
th<aVy 'n 1931, the stern castings of dev i10’000 -ton cruisers were a new t Ve optoent. And these sterns had to j^^hodt. We also had the hollow* Problem in which we had gone sh f ar an<^ tQ0 ^ast *n Putt'nS hollow tak ^ *n SOme °f che ships. We had to e them out and replace them.]
"Phis
ls the kind of thing which hap
pens k S WHICH nap-
you C”at y°U ^on t: know about. After th' Start opetatiog. going to sea, ^ngs happen at sea that don’t happen ^ y°u try things on land.” gas 6 ^eH> we can take one of these and tUr^lnes chat was tested out ashore p then we’ll know the rest of it. i "■ res, but you won’t know the to^hat come up when you expose it u tnarine environment, at sea,
ret er 0Perat'onal conditions. Mr. Sec- bary’ ^ can’t prove my case. It’s all
th °n my 35 years of experience in
e Navy.”
Wel^ he gQt rga| ma(j j never saw
jy. ’■hat way before.
tj Rivets, I’ve told you many
tt)e ?,S chat experience cuts no ice with
^ almost walked out. I was a little tL ’ too. But then I had second th'
memorandum that the Secretary had made his decision and we must support it loyally. Dave acted that way.
Well, what happens?
The boys at the Bureau of Ships proceeded with a more detailed design. They came in with these very optimistic plans as to what you could do with the gas turbines. They’d never installed one in anything, except a merchant ship for the MSTS [Military Sea Transport Service, now Military Sealift Command], but they were talking about a much higher powered and much more complicated engineering plant. I think it required three or four gas turbines and addressed the questions of clutching, reduction gears (very complex), air intakes, and all that. As they progressed, the ship grew. When the ship reached 8,000 tons, they had to broaden her to accommodate large areas for the air intakes required for the immense volume of air the turbines had to have.
At this point Rickover said, “Ah, I can put a reactor in an 8,000-ton destroyer, so she must be nuclear.”
Because the Congress would follow Rickover and no combatant ship would win congressional approval which had the capability of being nuclear without a nuclear plant, the program disappeared and we didn’t build any destroyers.
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°ughts and couldn’t see what good *°uld do.
tight, Mr. Secretary, if a^s what you want.” ve °u couldn’t disagree with Nitze
c°nvi
a rnent based entirely on logic. But
tjQargument based on either intui-
0r experience he wouldn’t buy.
N|tze made the decision to overrule
,ave McDonald and directed that r,es<
Nrb
tnuch unless you were able to lr>ce him by using his type of ar-
If jp .
^ new destroyers would have gas Ines. So Dave McDonald put out a
^edings / July 1979
For the ten years that he has been Director of the Naval Institute’s Oral History Program, Doctor John T. Mason has been helping people dip into their memory to recall and record those events they witnessed firsthand. The number of transcripts of his conversations is large and growing. Today, nearly 100 volumes are available to historians at the Naval History Center, the Naval Academy Library, and the Naval War College. The foregoing is an extract, edited only for clarity and continuity, from one of those bound volumes, published for the first time with the permission of Admiral Horacio Rivero, who was Vice Chief of Naval Operations during the period under discussion.
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