Admiral Rickover (1900 - 1986) the "Father of the [US and World's First] Nuclear Navy" was:
- brilliant, or a great self-promoter
- patriotic, yet selfish
- loyal to crews safety, yet disloyal to the Navy command structure
- far seeing in engineering and scientific terms, yet rejected creativity in many others
- a great man manager, yet many of his men hated him because he micro-managed them
- generous with his money, yet exploited the gifts from corporations system
- humourless, yet had a well rounded deadpan sense of humour.
A book called The Rickover Effect on his leadership style, is well worth reading.
Here and above, is a 4 minute 56 second video based on a 1984 US "60 Minutes" interview hosted by Diane Sawyer.
The whole interview video, removed from Youtube by December 2022 (if not earlier) lasted 15 minutes 45 seconds, which had the following notable moments:
3:35 - Rickover admits "I have the charisma of a chipmunk."
6:10 - Rickover cut parts of 2 legs of the chairs prospective SSN captain interviewees had to sit on so they would slide off their chairs
7.00 - Jimmy Carter, when a submarine officer "hated" Rickover a "few times" before Carter became President
7:30 - Rickover worked the political system to stay in office as nuclear navy chief
9.00 - many in the Reagan Administration, Navy and defense contractors organized Rickover's sacking/final goodbye in 1982 after a record 63 years of active duty
11:30 - He gave $100,000 of his own money to US educational projects
12:40 - He also built the first civilian nuclear plant. Was it the Shippingport Atomic Power Station?
13:30 - Thoughts on nuclear weapons
14:30 - Rickover and love letters
15:45 - Finishes.
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QUESTIONS
A. What are the most important leadership qualities a Submarine Commander should have?
B. What are the most dangerous traits a Submarine Commander might have?
2 comments:
Jimmy Carter passed his 'Rickover interview' and was slated to command one of the first USN SNNs, but had to leave the navy when his father passed on.
In all honesty he shouldn't have been in uniform for so many years, sort of like the Navy equivalent of J. Edgar Hoover.
Read Blind Man's Bluff for how he terrorised the Navy to build his NR1 project.
Hi Shawn C.
I'm of the belief that without Rickover the USN would have taken much longer to go nuclear submarines AND nuclear powered carriers.
The nuclear submarine race with the Soviets wouldn't have happened
The Soviets wouldn't have impoverished themselves building Typhoon SSBNs etc
hence collapse of the Soviet Union due to defense costs wouldn't have occurred
and the rest is history.
P.S. If nuclear missiles were placed in conventionally powered SSBs the Danger of Ambiguity may have led to dangerous use them or lose them incidents.
P.P.S Also, not to be forgot, Rickover is the father of civilian nuclear electricity reactors.
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