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eon RE:Admiral Rickover 7/14/2005 7:26:11 AM

All that I've read of the gentleman (and being a model builder who likes SSNs, I've read quite a bit) indicates he was something of an abrasive personality- but no more so than, say, Admiral Halsey. He was also opinionated, but he had the knowledge to back it up- rather like Admiral Burke. And he was not popular with the "holders of the pursestrings"- very much like Admiral Moorer. In short, he was a fairly typical example of the kind of Navy man who, when given a job, goes ahead and does it, and accepts that he's going to get peoples' backs up in the process. I have to admire him for that, and you can't really argue with the end results.

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gf0012-aust RE:Admiral Rickover 7/14/2005 7:49:10 AM

I'd argue that Rickover is the equivalent of Jackie Fisher. he amped up a lot of people, but if it wasn't for him, then the USN would never have been as well placed as it needed to be. He was also a technical flag officer - and that was a rarity then.

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ssnguy RE:Admiral Rickover 7/14/2005 12:34:32 PM

I've read the book in question and believe that Polmar doesn't have a balanced view of either Rickover or of the current state of the US submarine fleet. Some of the things he writes are absolutely goofy, especially about SEAWOLF. (Not that SEAWOLF's program is a case-study in effective submarine design and construction.) Rickover was a sword that cuts two ways. The US record on reactor safety is Rickover's greatest legacy. However the very conservatism that created that legacy stood in the way of exploring alternatives in US submarine design and construction. He had a vision of what works, what doesn't (fail me once and you're out-a here!), and he wasn't willing to gamble very much. Only today are we seeing on-shore simulators for the propulsion plant so operators can practice the seldom-if-ever encountered recovery events that can be experienced but which are almost never experienced in the wild. (Thank God!) Rickover didn't believe in simulators. He felt they would result in a cavalier approach to operating the reactor plant. That there was a famed incident report in the NRTBs (Naval Reactor Technical Bulletins) involving a crew actually trying something like that on a real shutdown reactor may have something to do with it! Rickover was awful with people who weren't in a position to do good things for him. He could also be quite thoughtful although in a sort of back-handed way that isn't easily differentiated from abuse. He did experiment. The TULLIBEE and the LIPSCOMB were experiments in turbine electric propulsion. I walked the engineroom of the 685 and was amazed - it was a different concept in layout. The original SEAWOLF's intermediate reactor was daring - but it didn't work and was dumped in concept and theory. I'm wary of the design of US submarines. They work and they work well. But there's a part of me that wonders if they are designed for COMBAT where they need to survive battle damage. I see too few pressure bulkheads, too large floodable volumes, and not enough redundancy. It's like we've forgotten all the lessons that were designed into the earlier generations of engineers who knew and had learned lessons from submarine operations in WWII. The 685 wasn't a "toy". It was a precursor. It's clear that electric propulsion is the way the US Navy wants to go. Maybe the technology is there to make it happen in a realiable way. There ARE substantial gains in silencing if you remove the reduction gears from the propulsion train. Of course they go with maintaining liquid-gas refrigeration units to keep superconductors happy. (I keep trying to make this work in the evironment of a warship and my imagination is NOT happy.) I'll just summarize and say that the state of the art as presented by Polmar isn't necessarily the real one. Accurate information about US submarines is difficult to find in the popular press (thank heavens). We've been a lot more closed-mouth about our capabilities and objectives than the Russians have been. Rickover was unique, extraordinary, and with a vision - a vision with both enhances and limits us to this day. I believe we're a few steps ahead of where we would be without him. Maybe much more had there been a serious nuclear accident.

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capt soap Gp Lipscomb 7/14/2005 5:21:22 PM

I dont know why the navy want happy with the Lipscomb, It was slightly quieter then the new 688La class at the time. In sea trials we took on a 30+ ship fleet we sunk them all in simulation, doubt we carried that many mk48's. The surface fleet never once had contact on us. During my 2+ yrs aboard we where nailed once Usn asw helicopter. The practice torpedo actual hit us, wasnt supose too.

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EW3 RE:Gp Lipscomb 7/14/2005 5:31:03 PM

The practice torpedo actual hit us, wasnt supose too. Saw a picture of a sub when I was in A school (1970) and it had a torpedo sticking out of it's sail.

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fangbopp RE:Rickover 12/28/2005 10:06:38 AM

Rickover's greatest strength was to see the "big picture" as to how nuclear propulsion could change undersea warfare. But in retrospect he probably should have been limited to the back-end of the ship, where his expertise lay. He was not an expert in sonar or weapons systems, and the demands of his increasingly-larger reactor plants limited the capabilities of the ship forward of the reactor compartment -- witness the Los Angeles, a shallower-diving submarine than the class she replaced, with only a few knots' speed advantage. It's not widely known that Los Angeles was originally conceived as a one-off, like the Lipscomb and the Narwahl, but Rickover used his influence to make it a class.

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fangbopp RE:Gp Lipscomb 12/28/2005 10:10:50 AM

Apparently Lipscomb suffered from heat problems, due to the fact that she had a huge DC motor turning the shaft. It stands to reason that a one-off design will be costlier to operate and maintain, so I'm sure that hastened her demise.

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bubblehead601 Rx Scram 1/21/2010 11:45:38 PM

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