The Submarine Ethos Runs Deep

The nature of life in a submarine, where all officers are responsible for the safe operation of the boat from the control room to the engine room, is the result of a unique ethos instilled from the beginning of a submariner's career.

Since the days of World War II, the submarine force has projected an appealing aura to military outsiders. Submarine community insiders' view of their own world, although maybe not quite so romantic, is defined by tremendous pride. To understand fully the ethos of the submarine, it might be necessary to live the experience for oneself, but a peek into submarine history sheds some light on this abstract concept.

The story of this ethos cannot be found in technical design histories or stories of battle in the Pacific War, or even in tales of special operations in recently published accounts of the Cold War. Instead, the outsider is much better served by trying to understand the process (and the history behind it) a young officer goes through to qualify for submarines. A glimpse inside the walls of Naval Reactors Washington reveals much about why submarine officers uphold the principles they do.

A unique aspect of the submarine community is the intimate relationship between submarines and nuclear power. All submarines in the U.S. Navy are nuclear powered, and all submarine officers are nuclear trained. This is different from the surface community, where even if junior line officers have experience running an engineering division, they might not be fully competent in that realm. In addition, although engineering officers certainly are experts in their field, they might not be able to fathom the broad scope of factors in a commanding officer's decision-making process.

Since the advent of steam, the Navy has struggled to bridge the gap between line officers and engineers. At the end of the 19th century, Assistant secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt supported and pushed through Congress the Navy Personnel Law of 1899, known as the Line-Engineer Amalgamation. Hailed as a recipe for failure by contemporary foreign navies, the amalgamation streamlined and made comparable the promotion systems of both line officers and engineers. It also required every officer to serve duty and stand watch in both engineering and line capacities.¹

The amalgamation ran into its share of problems. The main one was identified by lieutenant Edward L. Beach Sr., father of famous submariner and author Captain "Ned" Beach, in a 1902 article published in Proceedings. "So long as efficiency in command is the great and final goal toward which all officers must strive," Beach wrote, "so long to these officers will engineering be but an incident to the march."²

More than a century later, the submarine community has achieved harmony with the amalgamation's goals. In fact, the balance between line officer duties and engineering duties in submarines predates the advent of nuclear power. According to retired Vice Admiral Al Burkhalter, who entered the submarine community on board diesel boats in 1953, engineering duty officers never were used even as chief engineers on board the boats during his time. "The engineering responsibility as a line officer was not a new concept to submarines at all," he said. "It was preexistent [to nuclear power]."³

To be selected as a submarine officer, one must first complete a two-part interview process at Naval Reactors in Washington, D.C. First, the candidate has at least two interviews with an engineer from Naval Reactors that cover basic principles of math, science, and engineering. Assuming the candidate passes these interviews, he is taken to see the Director of Naval Nuclear Propulsion, a four-star admiral in the billet originally held by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover. The many stories of midshipmen interviews with Admiral Rickover have become almost folklore to submariners. They are representative of the fanatical focus placed on engineering imbued in every submarine officer, from commanding officer to ensign.

Newly commissioned officers selected for submarines go through a year-long sequence of theoretical and practical training in nuclear power, specifically in the use of the pressurized water reactor used on all U.S. submarines. Interestingly, at the conclusion of all this training, which is directly applicable to an officer's duties in the engine room, they spend a mere ten weeks in New London, Connecticut, at the Submarine Officer Course. Here they learn the "front end" of the boat-the art of the line officer. In reality, there is no difference in the mind-set of engine-room duties and front-end duties. There are no line officers and engineers in the submarine community; every officer is an unrestricted line officer and a trained nuclear engineer, capable of shouldering the responsibility of watchstanding in the engine room or the control room.

The focus on nuclear propulsion permeates every aspect of life on board submarines. Perhaps retired Admiral Kinnaird McKee gives the best explanation for this. "The world of nuclear submarines is a total immersion world," he said. "You have to grow up in the discipline in order to take responsibility of command."⁴ During his time as superintendent of the Naval Academy, when his first-class midshipmen inquired why the academy spent so much time on engineering as opposed to subjects such as philosophy or international affairs, Admiral McKee proposed a hypothetical situation: a midshipman becomes commanding officer of a ship in combat that has sustained serious battle damage. The commanding officer has three choices: stay and fight, control the damage and retreat, or abandon ship. All of this depends on propulsion. The ship cannot move without it or shoot at anything, since there is no electricity without propulsion. "You don't understand engineering, but your plant may be seriously damaged, so who will make that decision? That's your job," Admiral McKee said. "But you won't understand engineering . . . there is no need after all, since you are a 'warrior' . . . and you're going to put the lives of everybody in your ship in the hands of the engineer officer. You want him to make the decision for you? Is that your plan?"

This is an extreme case, but it provides insight into the concept of responsibility. Admiral Rickover said, "If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else."⁵ It is the commanding officer's obligation, as the bearer of responsibility for the entire submarine (not just forward of the engine compartment), to be knowledgeable and decisive in matters that affect the submarine and crew.

What is the culture within the nuclear power community that breeds such a concept of responsibility? Nuclear officers are taught and expected to question everything going on around them. In the world of submarines, "If people have any indication that you're not doing things right, things come to all stop until you prove that you know what you're doing."⁶

The ethos of any complex organization can be difficult to comprehend. Every organization, as well as everyone within it, is to some extent the sum of its experiences. For the submarine community, war in the Pacific and the head-to-head encounters with the Soviets during the Cold War have had lasting effects. But the values and principles regarding responsibility and their close-knit relationship with engineering fundamentals are the backbone of the submarine community.