For me it was a difficult experience. The entire course consumed eight months, including three one-month periods on the site at Arco, Idaho, the shore-based reactor plant that fully replicated one-fourth of the Enterprise’s propulsion unit. This consisted of two nuclear reactors powering two steam turbine engines driving a single propeller shaft through a reduction gear to produce 35,000 shaft horsepower (shp). It was a precise duplicate of the Enterprise installation. Rickover had set up this land-based prototype using components acquired on the justification that they could be used as spares for the Enterprise power plant in the event of an emergency.
Our prospective commanding officer (PCO) group studied thermodynamics, electricity, nuclear physics, and reactor engineering from textbooks under the tutelage of Rickover’s engineers and scientists at the headquarters. At the prototype installation in Idaho, we would actually operate the reactors and the steam plant. The senior officers were required to double-shift at the Arco site, working two eight-hour watches per day. As Rickover had told us, “The town is sixty miles from the site and there is nothing there when you get there. That leaves you eight hours a day to study, eat, sleep, shave, and do your calisthenics.” These were difficult times for me. Academics had not been a problem at the Naval Academy. Once I was confident I could pass the midshipman courses, I only did enough studying to keep a safe margin above a failing grade. In the Rickover program, however, an A average was required.
In Washington, the Holloways had no social life during that year with Rickover. I had several hours of homework every night, worked for Rickover on special projects on Saturdays, and used Sundays to catch up. On at least two occasions, Rickover called me in to express concern over my academic performance. Then, at about the eighth month, the dawning came, and all of the pieces of reactor technology came together for me. My last two months were actually enjoyable. Rickover assigned his senior students fascinating projects such as designing an inherently “unsafe” reactor. I received a grade of 97 percent on my finals, by one point the highest grade in our group.
The senior active duty naval officer permanently attached to Admiral Rickover’s staff was Bill Wegner, a Navy commander and a very bright and especially dedicated nuclear-trained officer who had been with Rickover from the beginning of Naval Reactors and would stick with “the kindly old gentleman,” or KOG, as Rickover was privately referred to by his staff to the very end. Although he was Rickover’s “chief of staff” in Rickover’s naval organization, I never saw him in uniform. Incidentally, nor did I ever see Admiral Rickover in uniform; he preferred the anonymity of civilian clothes. The chief of staff ultimately retired without making captain and became very influential in the field of nuclear power at the policy level.
The gap between the three stars of Rickover and the three stripes of his next senior officer was pretty large, and Rickover called upon his PCOs for administrative help when he had large numbers of officer candidates from the Naval Academy and schools for interviews. These were midshipmen in the fall semester of their senior year of undergraduate work who had volunteered for nuclear-power training with the guarantee of further assignment to submarine school (by then all new submarines were nuclear powered) or to nuclear-powered surface ships — cruisers, missile frigates, or aircraft carriers.
The candidates from the Naval Academy were delivered to Rickover from Annapolis by the busload. Arriving at his drab office spaces with its spot-patched industrial-quality linoleum floors, the midshipmen went through a series of three interviews with members of Rickover’s technical staff before their visit with the KOG. No officer or senior civilian was ever ordered to an assignment in the U.S. Navy’s Naval Reactor Program without a personal interview and approval by Admiral Rickover. Some might have as many as three sessions before Rickover was assured that the candidate would commit to hard work expected in any job working for Rickover.
The staff engineers in their interviews would probe the levels of intellect and technical potential of each interviewee and then prepare a written summary report on the candidate. Rickover himself reviewed these evaluations before his private meeting for the final interview. He would see as many as twenty midshipmen a day, beginning at 0900 and running until 1800 if necessary to complete the entire busload. All of this took a lot of organization — briefing the candidates, getting them to the preliminary interviews, and ensuring that the entire process ran smoothly with no delays and absolutely no gaps in the interviewers’ schedules. Rickover relied on our PCO group to run this process. He didn’t tell us how to do it, he just said what he wanted done.
As the senior officer among those under instruction, the job of running the interview process became my responsibility whenever I was not at the site in Arco. This also meant I had the additional duty of being present in Rickover’s office for every interview. This was the admiral’s decision because, in a previous year, one of the candidates — who incidentally had been turned down — told his congressman that Rickover had called him “a dumb shit.” Rickover probably did, and the midshipman probably deserved it. But the admiral wanted an officer present as a witness to deny future accusation of coarse language. At times I found it convenient to be out of earshot.
The other senior PCOs shared the duty as “the hot shell man” waiting to snag the usually bewildered candidate as he was ejected from the admiral’s office at the completion of the interview. The overall reaction of the PCOs who sat in on the interviews was unanimous: Rickover’s interview process was remarkably effective in selecting the people he considered suitable for his program. True, cognitive skills were a large part of the criteria, but Rickover was looking beyond that — for common sense, commitment, and, especially, integrity. I recall an incident that occurred when I was the inside man. A Navy medical corps doctor, a lieutenant, was being interviewed to be the medical officer on board a nuclear-powered submarine. He seemed to me to be a likely candidate until I witnessed the following exchange.
“Were you married going through medical school?” Rickover asked.
“Yes,” the lieutenant answered.
“Are you still married?”
“Yes.”
“To the same woman?”
“No.”
“Did your first wife pay your way through medical school?” Rickover asked.
“Yes,” said the lieutenant.
“That’s all, you are excused.”
After the doctor left, Rickover looked over at me and said, “Mark him down as unacceptable. Bring in the next candidate.”
At Naval Reactors in Washington, the staff and students worked six days a week. Rickover worked seven. He used Saturdays and Sundays to visit the shipyards where nuclear ships were being constructed and to go to sea on preacceptance trials for the new construction submarines. These sea trials were always scheduled for a Sunday to accommodate Rickover’s schedule. Rickover liked to take a nonsubmarine PCO with him on these trial runs. He wanted to expose the aviators and surface officers to the horrendous squeaks and groans emitted by the submarine’s steel hull as it approached test depth — just above the calculated crush point for the particular class of submarine.