THE POLICY FOR NUCLEAR PROPULSION IN SURFACE SHIPS
My relationship with Admiral Rickover had always been a comfortable one from the day I completed my tour of training duty attached to his Naval Reactors Branch in the Bureau of Ships. Rickover had an excellent sense of humor, but not many people had an opportunity to experience his wit because he was usually too busy chewing someone out. For some reason, probably due to the nature of my duties after completing Rickover’s course, I maintained a cordial relationship with the KOG and was able to exchange a bon mot and elicit a smile and a chuckle from his weather-beaten countenance. When I became CNO, our relationship did not really change perceptively. He didn’t call me to his office as he had before I had gotten my fourth star, but he was just as forthright and down to earth as he had ever been. He did realize, of course, that I had power-making decision that I had not exercised before, but he also knew that he had access to me for briefing programs and explaining his recommendations. He felt that, being the first CNO who was nuclear qualified, I would have a better grasp of what he was telling me than would the average four-star, who was probably inherently not well disposed toward Admiral Rickover, whether they knew him personally or only by reputation.
It was customary for Rickover to have his office make an appointment with me and then he would arrive half an hour to forty-five minutes early, during which time he would sit on the aide’s side of the CNO’s outer office, and keep the young aides, and especially the Wave officers, entertained by his stories and his usually corny sense of humor. When he entered the CNO’s office, however, he was all business, and he usually had David Leighton, his senior engineering assistant for nuclear power in surface warships, with him.
Then, in May 1976, we had a major row. By then, no one was questioning nuclear power in carriers. The special and unique military capability of a nuclear-powered carrier is its ability to proceed at high speed to anywhere on the high seas without pausing to replenish or refuel, conducting defensive air operations en route to its objective area, and launching its initial offensive strikes during the approach, more than six hundred miles from the target, then continuing around-the-clock air operations while closing the target area — and with enough aviation fuel and ammunition in its capacious tanks and magazines to remain on station for ten days to two weeks, until the situation has been resolved or underway replenishment groups arrive. It is the fifteen years’ fuel supply in the reactors that provide the ship’s range and allow for very large stocks of fuel and ammunition to be stored in the carrier’s hull, which normally would be reserved for fuel oil for the ship’s propulsion. The issue was nuclear power in surface ships other than carriers, namely, destroyers and frigates, which had the mission of “escorting” the carrier in the operational task groups. The first of these nuclear-powered escorts had been the USS Bainbridge, which was part of the initial nuclear-powered surface warship program pushed by Adm. Arleigh Burke following the success of the submarine Nautilus. The Bainbridge, completed in 1962, was an eighty-six-hundred-ton missile frigate, as these large surface warships were then called. (They were later reclassified as cruisers, or CGN). It was followed by the construction of seven more nuclear-powered frigates. Now, fifteen years later, questions were arising over the usefulness of nuclear power in escorts. There were several problems, but the basic concern was the very high cost of a nuclear-powered destroyer in comparison to an oil-fired version. There also were questions as to what benefits were really gained by the nuclear propulsion plant, and there was deep concern that nuclear-powered escorts were proving to be a drag on the construction of the nuclear-powered aircraft carriers because of the political opportunity they afforded opponents of nuclear power, both in the OSD and Congress.
The specific problem was that, in justifying the construction of a nuclear-powered destroyer, Rickover and the Sea Power Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee were advocating all nuclear-powered task forces. These would consist of a nuclear-powered carrier, supported by a nuclear-powered cruiser and four nuclear-powered destroyers. Unfortunately, that was not the way that the fleet operators envisioned the employment of these ships. When the Enterprise deployed from Norfolk directly to the Gulf of Tonkin around Africa and through the Indian Ocean, she was accompanied by the one nuclear-powered surface ship then in the fleet, the Bainbridge. The two nuclear-powered ships were able to make the transit from the East Coast of the United States to Southeast Asia at a high speed, averaging almost thirty knots, because their nuclear power plants eliminated the requirement for having to refuel en route. However, when the Enterprise commenced combat air operations with Task Force 77, the situation changed. It was necessary to rotate gunships through the shore-bombardment assignments in Vietnam in order to equalize the wear on the ships’ gun barrels. That meant that the Bainbridge would go on the gun line for fire support of the forces ashore with its 3-inch gun battery, and its place with the Enterprise would be taken by a conventionally powered destroyer. Essentially there was no notable difference in the efficiency of the Enterprise task group in the Gulf of Tonkin whether or not the escorts were nuclear powered. Also, many of the other carrier commanding officers and their embarked flags would ask to have the Bainbridge assigned to their task group — which was, of course, conventionally powered — simply for the unique experience or even the prestige of having a nuclear warship in their entourage.
The real difficulties then surfaced in Washington. When the testimony in behalf of the construction of the next nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was being presented to Congress, the opponents of nuclear power brought up the argument that if it was the Navy’s policy to have nuclear-powered task groups, then it was not enough to build a carrier; it was necessary to build four nuclear-powered escorts for each carrier. At the time the Navy’s plan was simply to use the nuclear-powered carriers to replace the nonnuclear versions in the fleet, and there were plenty of conventionally powered destroyers in the force levels to provide four escorts without the necessity of building another destroyer. Consequently, the cost of the nuclear carrier was represented by the opposition as being the cost of a nuclear-powered carrier plus the cost of four nuclear destroyers. This was clearly an extravagance, and I for one, having served for two years in command of the Enterprise and its task group in combat in Vietnam, simply could not justify the need to build additional nuclear-powered escorts at a cost of almost twice that of its oil-fired counterpart, which actually did not have to be constructed but was already available in the fleet. In May 1976 I issued an AllNav that defined the policy for nuclear power in new ship construction. The essence of this directive was that, one, all future submarines would be nuclear powered. And two, all future aircraft carriers would be nuclear powered. There would be no more nuclear surface combatants constructed in the future because the added expense could not be justified in the other classes in comparison to the benefits attained.