A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (9 page)

The inside of a submarine is packed as densely as possible with equipment, leaving limited space to permit personnel to sleep, eat, and move. Even in the more luxurious officers’ quarters, we slept on bunks wedged closely above one another, with a narrow opening on one side through which we folded ourselves before stretching out. When I was lying on my back, there was not enough space for a paperback book to be opened on my chest. The
K-1
was especially small, with our advanced sonar equipment making it even more crowded. Air for breathing was either recirculated through filters while we were deeply submerged or replenished while we were cruising on the surface or with our snorkel tube (about twelve inches in diameter) “inhaling” fresh air.

A fire could be deadly, especially if toxic fumes were generated from plastic or rubber insulation. All submariners had to be trained in fighting fires, and while our ships were undergoing routine maintenance in a dry
dock or shipyard, we were sent to special schools to learn how best to combat this ever-present danger. On one occasion we had a fire in our engine room while submerged, and, as engineering officer, I was the leading firefighter. I donned the appropriate clothing and gas mask, discovered the source of the flames in the main motor, and directed the application of carbon dioxide and dry powder, since water or foam could not be used. I was wearing headphones and speaking into a microphone to the captain, and I reported that the fire was under control. The next thing I remember was lying on a table in the crew’s mess room with a hospitalman’s mate trying to get me to breathe oxygen. After a brief spell of vomiting, I was soon back to normal.

I had been serving on a ship in 1948 when President Harry Truman ordained, as commander in chief, that racial discrimination be ended in the armed forces and in the U.S. Civil Service. This was seven years before Rosa Parks took a front seat on a Montgomery bus and Martin Luther King, Jr., became famous. This change was accepted with equanimity on our ship, and I don’t remember any backlash at all among the other crews with which I was familiar, but there was an outcry from many sources, especially among the members of the U.S. Congress from the South. South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond was nominated as the “Dixiecrat” candidate in the 1948 presidential election, and his name replaced Truman’s on ballots in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina.

On the USS
K-1
three years later, I played on a fast-pitch softball team that rarely lost a game, primarily because we had a black sailor named Russell, who was our pitcher and could throw the ball with blinding speed and good control. From just forty-six feet away (twenty feet closer than a baseball mound), the ball would arrive at the batter’s plate in the twinkling of an eye, and even the best batters could only guess ahead of time where the next pitch might be. Any hit was just an accident, and we would quite often win no-hitters. Thanks to a broad smile and a friendly attitude, our pitcher was the most popular man on the ship.

The USS
K-1,
1950s. The
K-1
operated mostly in the Atlantic-Caribbean area and spent as much time at sea as possible.

I was on duty when our submarine went into port in Nassau and tied up at the Prince George Wharf, and I was the officer who accepted an invitation from the governor-general of the Bahamas for our officers and crewmen to attend an official ball to honor the U.S. Navy. There was a more private comment that a number of young ladies would be present with their chaperones. All of us were pleased and excited, and Captain Andrews responded affirmatively. We received a notice the next day that, of course, the nonwhite crewmen would not be included. When I brought this message to the captain, he had the crew assemble in the mess hall and asked for their guidance in drafting a response. After multiple expletives were censored from the message, we unanimously declined to participate. The decision by the crew of the
K-1
was an indication of how equal racial treatment had been accepted—and relished. I was very proud of my ship.

On leave later that year, Rosalynn, our two boys, and I returned to Plains for a visit with our parents. When I was describing this incident, my father quietly left the room, and my mother said, “Jimmy, it’s too soon for our folks here to think about black and white people going to a dance together.” I realized how much difference there was between my life in the U.S. Navy and what it would be if I lived in Southwest Georgia. When we came to live there a few years later, we learned that she was still correct.

After serving on the
K-1
for two years, I learned about the planned construction of two submarines that would be propelled by nuclear power. Captain Hyman Rickover was in charge of this highly secret program and was known as the world’s foremost expert on peaceful uses of atomic reactors for generating electricity, providing radioactive material for medical purposes, and now for driving a ship. He would be in personal charge of selecting young submariners to lead each of two precommissioning
crews to develop power plants that would be small, safe, and effective enough to be mounted in the hull of a submarine. One reactor would be built by General Electric Corporation in Schenectady, New York, and the other by Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh. Like a host of others, I applied for one of these positions, and after a few weeks I was ordered to Washington for an interview with Rickover.

Captain Rickover was highly controversial, and almost universally condemned by more orthodox senior officers for his radical disregard of navy protocol and procedures. The admirals on the selection board voted repeatedly against his promotion from captain to rear admiral, which had always meant the end of a naval career. It was the personal intervention of President Truman and some of the senior U.S. senators who approved a special law that overrode the admirals’ decision and kept Rickover on duty.

I approached the interview with a lot of trepidation and had prepared as well as possible by reviewing current events, naval tactics, and other issues that I thought he might wish to discuss. I entered his office and found him sitting behind a large desk, with a single straight chair in front of it. He motioned for me to sit and immediately surprised me by asking what subjects I wished to discuss. One after another, I selected those about which I knew most at the time, including current events, naval history, submarine battle tactics, electronics, and gunnery. In each case, he asked me questions of increasing difficulty until I was unable to answer them. He never smiled, always looked directly into my eyes, and seemed to relish my obvious mental—and physical—discomfort. (I learned later that the front two legs of my chair had been shortened so I felt as if I were sliding off.)

When I responded that I read a lot of books, he cross-examined me about them. We covered some plays by Shakespeare and Ibsen, novels by William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, and a few novels recently on the bestseller list, going into detail about
The Caine Mutiny
by Herman Wouk. Then he asked what kind of music I preferred, and I responded rather brashly that I enjoyed country music and jazz but knew more about classical compositions. He asked for my favorite form, and I told him that
I really liked piano concertos and opera. Rickover leaned forward and asked, “What is your favorite opera?” I blurted out, “Wagner’s
Tristan und Isolde,
” and he asked, “Which movement do you prefer?” Fortunately, I was able to name the ending, known as “Liebestod,” or “love death.” I was thankful that my roommate and I had known this music and played it often at Annapolis.

Almost two hours had passed, and it seemed that the interview was about over. Rickover asked me another question, and I thought I could answer it satisfactorily.

“How did you stand in your class at the Naval Academy?”

“Sir, I stood fifty-ninth in a class of 820.”

After a short pause, he asked, “Did you always do your best?”

I started to answer “Yes, sir,” but I remembered who this was and all the many missed opportunities I had had to study more, participate in class activities, or strive to reach a higher level of military rank within the brigade. I finally gulped and said, “No, sir, I didn’t always do my best.”

He looked at me for a long time, and finally asked: “Why not?”

Then he turned his chair around to end the interview and began working on some papers on a table behind his desk. I sat there several minutes as he ignored me, and then I slowly left the room. I was disheartened on the way back to the submarine base, where I told Rosalynn I had not done well at all. But I was soon notified that I had been chosen—probably because I answered his final question truthfully. Before I received my official orders, our third son, Jeffrey, was born in the navy hospital in New London.

The other officer ordered to the USS
Seawolf
detail in Schenectady was Lieutenant Charles Carlisle, a classmate of mine who was just slightly junior to me in class standing. We had about two dozen enlisted men serving under us, and we were soon immersed in learning the rudiments of nuclear power and helping to build the prototype of the reactor that would be in the ship. This power plant was unique in that we used liquid sodium to go into the reactor and bring out heat that transformed water into steam for turbines that propelled the ship and provided power for other uses. Sodium was explosive when in direct contact with water, and
the entire prototype power plant on which we worked was assembled within a steel sphere about two hundred feet in diameter and designed to contain a possible radioactive detonation if a tragic accident should occur. The major advantages of sodium were that, as a metal, it could be circulated by electric fields in pumps with no moving parts, and it would bring out much more heat than the same volume of water. Compared to that of the
Nautilus,
which would be commissioned two years earlier and used water as a heat transfer agent, our power plant was smaller, more efficient, and quieter. Designing and building one of the first high-capacity nuclear power plants and understanding the submarine in which it would be installed was a constant learning process, on the cutting edge of science. I was ordered to supplement my practical training with studies of theoretical nuclear physics at nearby Union College.

There were few people at that time who were as knowledgeable as we were about this new technology, and all of us had unique security clearances, known as “Restricted Data.” When a Canadian “heavy water” nuclear power plant at Chalk River was destroyed by accident in 1952, by a reactor meltdown and subsequent hydrogen explosions, my crew were volunteered by Rickover to assist with the disassembly so it could be replaced. We traveled by train to the isolated site northwest of Ottawa and were given a briefing on the status of the disaster. The reactor core was below ground level and surrounded by intense radioactivity. Even with protective clothing, each of us would absorb the maximum permissible dose with just ninety seconds of exposure, so we had to make optimum use of this limited time. The limit on radiation absorption in the early 1950s was approximately one thousand times higher than it is sixty years later.

An exact mock-up of the damaged reactor had been constructed on a nearby tennis court, modified constantly to represent at all times the exact status of the real core underground, including every pipe, fitting, bolt, and nut. Television cameras were focused on the core, so that when any changes were made they were duplicated on the mock-up.

I divided our team into groups of three, and each trio would don the heavy white suits and masks, dash onto the tennis court, and remove as
many bolts and pipes as possible in ninety seconds. These pieces would then be replaced, and we tried again and again until we were as proficient as possible. Only then did we go down into the radioactive area and do the same disassembly on the real target. We returned to Schenectady after all of us had exhausted our permissible time in the radioactive site. There were a lot of jokes about the effects of radioactivity, mostly about the prospect of being sterilized, and we had to monitor our urine until all our bodies returned to the normal range. None of us suffered any permanent aftereffects, and I was glad to learn several years later that the Chalk River reactor was back in operation.

In April 1953 I had a call from my cousin Don Carter, who told me that my father was seriously ill and might not survive. He would be going to Emory Hospital in Atlanta for further tests. Daddy had always been in robust health, was a good athlete, a hardworking farmer and businessman, and at the time a member of the state legislature. I was stricken with grief and concern, especially after my mother informed me that Daddy might have cancer. I had been gone from my home in Plains since 1941, as a college student and in the U.S. Navy, and had rarely visited my parents during those years. After a couple of months, Mama let me know that Daddy was terminally ill, with pancreatic cancer, and had only a few weeks to live. I obtained permission from Rickover to leave my post for two weeks so I could be with Daddy, and drove down to Plains in July. I was looking forward to returning to my challenging and exciting work as a nuclear submariner.