Rickover: Competence Outweighs Grace

Adm. Hyman G. Rickover has finally retired--not only from the Navy but also from the scene. His personality and style are the stuff of legend; his quirks will be told and retold for decades. Overbearing in victory and surly in defeat, he imprinted his personality on a generation of naval officers and naval programs. It is all the more important, therefore, to separate the legend from the legacy.

A small man physically, Rickover was nevertheless larger than life. Officers in the nuclear-power program will always remember him as a giant--intimidating, irascible, demanding. His intellectual and personal dominance over those whom he selected for his program was so great that officers charged with the nation’s highest responsibilities--command of nuclear-missile-armed submarines at sea--considered it a normal and routine activity to write him weekly personal letters about their ships, their crews and, more, their personal concerns and states of mind. Few serving officers--or, for that matter, officials--have told Congress, as did Rickover, that he had grown weary of sharing his wisdom with members of Congress because their discussions too often had “the seriousness of a high-school debate.”

But Rickover deserves to be remembered for much more than his personality and style. His legacy will affect the Navy and national defense for many years.

Without Rickover, neither naval nor civilian nuclear power would be technically as sound or as safe as it is today. His special role in bringing the Polaris submarine program quickly to fruition is so well known that it needs no additional explanation. The extent to which the naval-reactor program has led the way for non-military exploitation of nuclear power remains too little appreciated. Safety considerations in the design, operation, maintenance and protection of sensitive technology that we now take for granted all reflect standards and practices developed in the naval nuclear-reactor program. Indeed, even today the nation’s premiere reactor design, development and test facility is located at Idaho Falls, the site of the Navy’s nuclear-power research and training facility.

In his unvarnished but not unskillful way, Rickover also laid the foundation for dealing with defense contractors on terms beneficial to the government, the taxpayer and ultimately to national and Western defense. His newsworthy struggles with shipbuilders also proved noteworthy; they established the basis on which Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. and his undersecretaries would reintroduce competition on price and quality in naval programs.

In short, Rickover helped sustain the qualitative edge in military forces on which the United States and the West have depended since World War II. His work on naval nuclear power and his high standards for the profession have helped sustain deterrence under conditions of Western numerical inferiority in important categories of weapons.

Characteristically, in one of his last appearances before Congress, Rickover disclaimed his importance while calling for still more change. “I have not been effective,” he said. “If I had been effective, the Defense Department would not be run like it is.” His attitude occasioned much irritation, but this nation will always need competence more than it needs grace or charm in its military leaders.