Rickover said, “That’s okay. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. You pick a nice restaurant and we’ll go out tonight and get a steak. You and I can sit there, enjoy our steak, and go over the whole cruise.” My face must have fallen because Dave Leighton, who was Rickover’s number one assistant and often traveled with him, spoke up and said, “Admiral Rickover, are you out of your goddamn mind? Holloway has been at sea away from his wife and family for eight months. He doesn’t want to talk to you. He wants to see his family.” Rickover replied, “I’m sure Holloway would like to talk to me about how the nuclear reactors performed.” Dave Leighton said to the admiral, “Come with me,” and he and Rickover departed without any more fuss. I invited Rickover to join me at breakfast in the commanding officer’s cabin the next morning. Rickover had to catch a plane back to Washington at 0930 but could just make it. That breakfast was an enjoyable session. Rickover was still caught up in the excitement of the activity of homecoming and the national publicity that his nuclear carrier, the Enterprise, was attracting.
A word about Dave Leighton, Rickover’s assistant for nuclear-powered surface ships. I had worked very closely with Leighton, and I depended upon him enormously throughout my relationship with Rickover and later sought his personal advice on nuclear programs when I became CNO. Leighton was very smart, a brilliant engineer, and impeccably loyal. On occasion Rickover would get furious with him, have a tantrum, and say to him, “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. I don’t know why I put up with your stupidity. You’re not doing what I told you to do.” Leighton would stand there, listen to Rickover, then continue his conversation as if Rickover hadn’t even spoken. Rickover would always simmer down and eventually agree with Leighton, once Dave had explained himself. He was enormously patient and considerate of Admiral Rickover. I believe that he always felt that these outbursts were Rickover’s way of testing him, making sure Leighton was willing to stand behind his words and not back down.
After the euphoria of homecoming, which lasted about seventy-two hours, the crew of the Enterprise got back to work. This ship was a community, a home for four thousand sailors, and had to continue to function in that capacity. It was not just a case of letting everybody off to be with their families.
Commencing on 24 June, half the crew would depart on twenty days’ leave, and the balance of the officers and men would manage the housekeeping affairs for the Enterprise. When the first leave period ended, on 15 July, the first leave party would return and the second group would depart on three weeks’ leave. Those crewmembers not on leave would put in a full day’s work from 0800 to 1700 and be aboard for twenty-four-hours duty every fourth day to provide the security and continuity required in a major man of war. The nuclear reactors had been shut down, and the electrical power for the carrier was being provided by its own train of diesel generator cars. If the Enterprise had hooked up to commercial shore power, the city of Alameda would have been blacked out.
Although the work was reduced to a minimum so that it could be accomplished without too much strain by the 50 percent of the crew on board, there were still essential functions that had to be accomplished. About 25 percent of the men were due for transfer through expiration of enlistment or completion of a sea duty, which meant transfer to a shore station for two years. At the same time, the ship was receiving replacements for this 25 percent, coming from shore duty to begin their three-year sea tour. In addition, there were the normal administrative affairs dealing with the lives of fifteen hundred sailors living on board a carrier, which, even though moored at a pier, still had to be provided with three meals a day, hot water, electricity, and everything else necessary to make life as comfortable as possible on board. Not more than 30 percent of the crew was married and had dependents in the area, which meant that for the unmarried sailors and junior officers, the Enterprise would be their home and services for them had to be as complete as possible under the circumstances.
Hanging over all this planning and the activities of the port period was the realization that in November, less than six months away, the Enterprise would again depart the United States for a minimum of seven months on the line, conducting combat operations in the Gulf of Tonkin. The ship had to start, then, in July in order to prepare for that next deployment. Every week of the five months available had to be profitably employed in training the replacement crew members, getting the ship ready to take aboard its air wing, stocking supplies, installing new equipment, and loading out with fuel and ammunition. Many repairs and modifications had to be made to the ship and its embarked equipment. Advances in technology were constant, and these five months in port were an opportunity to install the latest radars and new aircraft test equipment, make upgrading and safety changes to the nuclear plant, and train all the sailors in how to use and maintain the new equipment.
First on the list of material work to be accomplished was the necessity for the Enterprise to be drydocked so that its bottom could be cleaned and repainted, and any work to the hull of the ship that was below the waterline had to be accomplished. So the Enterprise was scheduled to enter the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, in San Francisco, for drydocking. One problem was that the reactor plant had been shut down and the ship would have to be moved “cold iron,” a Navy term meaning that the ship would have no propulsive capability of its own but would have to depend entirely on tugs. Furthermore, when unplugged from its electrical support, the train of diesel generators on the pier at Alameda, the Enterprise would have to provide all of its electrical power through the emergency diesel generators installed in the ship. This meant that only about 30 percent of the normal electrical load could be provided.
Although technically on leave, I returned to be on the bridge when the Enterprise was moved from Alameda to Hunters Point. According to Navy regulations, the captain was not responsible for the safety of the ship in a cold-iron movement like this, with the power supplied by Navy tugs under the control of a civilian Navy harbor pilot. Traditionally, though, my place was on the bridge whenever the Enterprise was not securely moored. The day of the move, the pilot reported on board with a total of ten tugs to assist him, four large, powerful, oceangoing tugs to move the carrier across the bay, and six small “docking” tugs to maneuver the ship in the very tricky evolution of crossing the sill of the drydock without allowing the ship to get cocked as its 1,000-foot length entered the 1,200-foot drydock. Unfortunately, on the day of the move, the winds were at twenty knots, gusting occasionally to twenty-five, which is pretty much standard for San Francisco Bay. This made the operation especially difficult. But safety was the number one consideration, and on the sixth attempt, the pilot, with very smart maneuvering of his tugs, was able to get the bow of the Enterprise over the sill of the drydock and slip it in without the sides of the ship making contact with the drydock. Our main problem was that the tug power was inadequate for the wind conditions, and there were no more tugs available in the entire Bay Area on that day. Six of the tugs had been U.S. Navy boats and the others were contract vessels from the local towing companies.