 There are a bunch of biographies and a bunch of history books that talk about Rick Over and my book is not one. What I wanted to do was to talk about to put Rick Over in a unique position because I am the only person who actually ran a nuclear submarine around who talks about what we did with what he produced. And the reason I thought that now was a good time was because of what's going on. You have the regeneration of China and Russia as aspiring peer forces. You have the question of the culture of whether the Air Force has lost their culture with respect to nuclear forces, whether the Navy has lost their culture with respect to what's going on in Charleston. You have the question of what's going to happen with ship new construction money. You're spending about 60% of it on submarines for the next five years. We're trying to reconstitute the Trident Force and the New Attack and Tech Submarine Force and there will be a lot of questioning about what are you going to spend for surface ship construction. This is the same thing that led to the fights that Rick Over and Admiral Zuma had in the 70s and 80s when I worked for both of them, when I was dual-hatted and worked for both of them, which was certainly a pleasant time. In addition, you're about to put women aboard tech submarines. That's what really drove me to think about this because when I was CEO of a large company and one of the best people that worked for me, I was walking around my offices and this woman said to me, were you in submarines? She didn't even pause to ask me to answer. She said you're shamanistic. She did not say pig, her mouth formed pig, but she didn't actually say it because she was much more respectful than that, which Rick Over would have said pig, but she didn't. The problem was her first cousin, who was her best friend, had just graduated first from Cornell and was going to become, was the first woman in submarines and she became the first woman to qualify in submarines. Audrey didn't want her cousin to throw away her life on this submarine force, which didn't ever, hadn't put women in yet and was certainly going to waste her cousin's life. She wanted to take it on somebody and I happened to walk by her desk and so she took it on me. So Lynn and I asked Audrey and her boyfriend and Jeanine and her father over our house from a game lunch and I tried to explain that the submarine force, you know, everybody has a different culture, each facet, you all know this, but each facet of the military, each subgroup has its own culture and unique. The submarine force is a meritocracy. I'm not sure, I can't say what it's more or less, but it's a meritocracy. It is completely dependent upon your abilities and how hard you work. And that's why Rick Over, when Rick Over started this in 1948, he had a woman who ran part of his staff, actually ran the chemistry portion of his staff. He recruited women in when he thought the ERA was going to pass. His wife was a graduate of the Sorbonne, had a PhD back in 1931 when not a lot of women were getting PhDs in the Sorbonne. When she died of a heart attack, his second wife was also a very accomplished woman, was an A.B. Different approach, candidly, than many other career paths. But I didn't do a good job that day of explaining it, and so I decided I better write it down and I better try to capture this cult, this unique culture for her and for other people, which I did. I maintain, I did, you know, being a nuke, I'd say that. In the process, I started focusing on the culture and I started focusing on Rick Over and his leadership because what's driven me nuts, and I've been a political appointee in Democratic and Republican administrations, I've run several companies, in none of them have I seen the, and Rick Over was probably in my opinion the best manager I've ever seen, and if you read the book you'll see that I'm somewhat on the fence about his leadership abilities. But I don't see other people using the management, and I don't think many Navy people use his management techniques candidly. And when I teach, I teach management leadership, I've taught it in universities. I see very few people who are good managers and darn few leaders, and they don't pay attention to teaching leadership and management, and I wanted to capture that, and I wanted to capture why Rick Over was unique. In doing that, I needed to go back and capture a period of time, and I needed to do it for you too, and let me take you back for a period to remind you of something. You all know, or many of you know, and let me gloss over this, that in 19, the USS Nullis was the first submarine in the world, it was the first nuclear reactor in the world, it's the first nuclear submarine in the world, it went to sea in 1954, okay. Soviets didn't have one, nobody else had one, we had one, that's it. Nullis goes to sea, okay great achievement, let's accept that and let's go on. There's a whole story behind that, two people, I got an email last night from one of the, there are two people who were with Rick Over, by the way, when he did this, one of them read my book and died six months ago, one of them happened to get a copy of it, he sent me a note last night, the nice thing was, he said it was the best book about Rick Over that I've ever read, which is a nice thing to have, I mean, I was very pleased. But anyway, let's go back to what was going on, what happens in October 1957? In October 1957, Sputnik, the Soviet's law of Sputnik, what is Sputnik? What is Sputnik really? What Sputnik is, is Khrushchev saying to the United States, I can send a missile, which will drop a nuclear weapon on you anytime I want to, and the oceans no longer will protect you, and you are helpless against me. And Eisenhower understood that message as did the rest of the world. Now what was Eisenhower's problem? Eisenhower's problem is, he's trying to recover from the spending of World War II, he's trying to recover from the spending of the Korean War. We do not know the Soviets are spending 40% of their GDP for the military. We're spending 12%, we think it's a lot. We have no idea they're spending them themselves in the ground. Our only allies are the French and the British, and yet we know we're engaged in a race of capitalism versus communism, and the rest of the world is watching. And how are we doing? Well, Sputnik is up going around the world. Let me review what's going on for you. What is the unemployment rate in the United States? What's the unemployment rate in Detroit in 1957? 20%. How are we doing on launching rockets? The Naval Research Laboratory has been assigned to launch rockets. They've launched four. They've actually tried to launch four. What's the highest the best one's gotten off the ground? Anybody know? No, no. Not zero? That is a travesty and a nasty comment. As a naval officer, I resent that. Four feet. Not zero. We actually got one of them four feet in the air. The other three got zero, but one of them got four feet in the air. Now, the Press Secretary, Eisenhower's Press Secretary, who suffers from alligator mouth hummingbird ass problem, has said that we will have satellites around the earth so numerous that we'll have problems with them running into each other in 1958, but we have not quite managed that. We haven't gotten one off the ground. And in fact, Eisenhower will have to turn to a card carrying Nazi who has worked directly for Hitler in order to get the first one launched. And if you think Eisenhower wants to do that, you are crazy. But that's what we'll do, right? Okay, so that part's not going so well. How about the Army? Eisenhower's an Army officer, a five-star Army officer. How is his beloved Army doing in 1957? Because they're on the front page of every newspaper in the country. By the way, I'll give you a clue. What are they doing? Well, they're in Little Rock, Arkansas, because Fobis, as men decided that he's going to beat up those little black kids instead of letting them go to school, and he's going to have his National Guard help the whites beat up the black kids. And Eisenhower has had to nationalize the Arkansas National Guard and then replace them with regular Army troops. And Fobis is on the front page of New York Times saying he is the new Robert E. Lee that's going to lead this country into the next century. And other people are saying, why in the Army out preparing to fight the Soviets instead of down there doing whatever it's Fobis of you're doing? So that's what Eisenhower has his Army doing. So that's great news. How about the Air Force? What's the Air Force doing that will help him out? Well, the Air Force has decided to engage in an exercise, a nuclear exercise with the United Kingdom. To do that, they've decided to be a really good idea if they flew one of their nuclear weapons over to the United Kingdom to show them how this is done as professionals. Except when flying across South Carolina, they see an indication which indicates that the nuclear weapon is not actually locked into place and the navigator has decided to look to reach down and make sure it's locked into place except the airplane jiggles at the time he loses balance, he steps on a release lever and drops that sucker through a farmhouse in, where was it, Moss City? I forget where it was. Let me look. In case you're down there, you can go down there and look at the plaque. Mars Bluff, South Carolina, there's a plaque and they fixed the house which was missing three rooms because the place didn't go off or else it would be missing South Carolina and we'd only have 49 states. But so it takes care of Navy, Army, Air Force, what do we have left? Marines. Marines are out sea with the Navy. The only thing that Eisenhower has is the USS Nullis. It's the only thing that the Soviets don't have is the nuclear submarines. Now fortunately for Eisenhower, unfortunately for Rickover by the way, Rickover's gone out and he's recruited a whole bunch of officers because Rickover knows what he needs is talent. It's just like any other military thing, what you want is talent. That's good and bad parts of this and I talk about it in my book because it turns out it's going to plague Rickover for all his life and there are exceptions I happen to be one of them. Which is that the problem with recruiting these guys are is then control them because some of them are not as controllable as I am. What happens is he's got a guy named Anderson who's the second CO of Nullis and Anderson only wants his medals and glory. He doesn't want to just run around and make Rickover look good. And the president, what he wants, he has his aide go get Rickover or go get Anderson. He doesn't talk to the chief naval operations. There is no chairman joining Chief Staff and the president doesn't talk to Rickover either. He goes, gets that commander and he says, you have him come up to the White House. I want to talk to him. And he says, okay son, I want you to go on to the North Pole. Now remember, Russia is protected on the South by all the satellite nations that they invaded and conquered so that you couldn't invade it without going through about 300 miles of land. And the first was that was so that the Marines couldn't get up there. And then the North on both sides, East and West, it's protected by ice. If you've ever done this in the winter, I'm telling you it's about 120 miles of ice. North Pole is about 1500 miles of ice. So what Eisenhower does, he tells them to take the Nullis on that 1500 miles of ice. If they're going to send a message with Sputnik going around like this, he's going to send a message to have Nullis going on the ice. Nullis, by the way, is not built to go on the ice. It's the most dangerous thing in the world you'd want to do. And the C&O, when he hears about it, writes Eisenhower a note and says, this isn't in the book because I didn't put it in, but he writes him a note and says, this is the stupidest thing you've ever seen. It's longer than that. It doesn't quite say that. But you know, we're not going to do this. Sends it over by messenger and Eisenhower says, is that a note from the C&O about Nullis? And his aide says, yes, sir, and he says, don't open it, send it back to him. Because President Eisenhower understood what he was doing. Anyway, in the book, it tells you what Rick Ortegaard did, which is really a mature, maybe I'll get to that. But anyway, it works, right? And then Eisenhower, what he does is he also takes his personal naleade and he has him getting another submarine and go around the world following Magellan's track from 1648 or whatever hell the guy did it. You're somebody's historian. I think it was 1648. Anyway, and what he's going to do is so that when he gets to meet with Kristjof next time, because if you remember at the time, about every six months or so they'd meet with Kristjof, the two of them would meet and it was sort of like playing cards where they'd show various aces and kings and pair of jacks and say, I'm pretty cool, you're not, you know, that sort of thing. And they have this. Anyway, so that's what he was doing. Didn't even invite Rick, didn't even invite Rick over to the White House when he did it. But anyway, what, but what Eisenhower was doing was saying, you may, I may be not able to get you to my army because he got all that 300 miles of stuff and I can't get you with anything else, but I can get you with this nuclear submarine so they can go on the ice and they come right in your harbors and they will eat you alive, right? And then he started a building program of submarines, which is the reason why I spent 18 out of my first 20 years at sea. Anyway, it's also the reason when you hear people say that Rick over had a charm life and he had all these people in Congress on his side and they can't imagine why he's doing, why he was, had such a charm life. He had a charm life because the Presidency of the United States wanted him to have a charm life because the Presidency of the United States were using these stupid submarines, right? When I was 36, 36 or so, I personally briefed the Presidency of the United States after a trip. Why? Well, it's because I'm personally charming and really good looking, either that or it's because the Presidency of the United States wanted that kind of visibility. To get underway in submarines, the Presidency of the United States controlled when I got underway. You guys don't know that. All this is really classified time, you know what I mean? You have to understand that. And I didn't have a boomer. I didn't have a big attack. I had an attack submarine and I was going after a missile submarine. Anyway, that's another subject. Forget I said that. Anyway, so, but you have to understand the Presidency of the United States was involved in this sort of stuff. That's why, historically, all this emphasis worked. And it's why these things worked. Now, how did Rickover, given all that, and Rickover also worked with really good people? He did. And they were, but what did he do? What was his leadership? Well, Rickover had three things he worked on. First one was he said, and there were guys, I was not this stupid, but there were guys who would call him and say, you know, I've got this problem, man. Well, what would I suggest I do? And if he didn't fire you for asking that stupid question, he would just say, do what is right and hang up the phone. That was his mantra, was to do what was right. You isn't follow the written procedure because whatever things have changed in really fast in life, what was done two years ago may well not be the right answer for what is now. The question is, do what is right? Do what is right is a toughie, right, candidly. Do what is right is a very hard charge. Do what is right, I think, is a really interesting charge. I once was doing an investigation and I decided the problem that we had that was really just reverberating the fleet was this two-star admiral was now alcoholic and nobody would take him on and it was just causing, he was permeating throughout the force and it was causing a problem. And I decided that if I were going to do what was right, what I should do is prefer a charge against him and take him up to him. Now I was no six at the time and it turned out when I delivered him at his home, he didn't appreciate it. But it all worked out and he ended up resigning and after a while everybody forgot I had done that I think and I think it worked out that that was right. It was painful for a couple of weeks. But it's an interesting thing that was his charge was to do what was right. The second thing he did and that was his main charges, he had three though. The second thing was if you called him up and let's say he called you and said you have made an error and you said, I know but it was really a minor error. I forgot to close, I didn't follow the rules for closing this lock but I had been working extra time and I've done more work than anyone else. In fact I've worked, we were just some place in Canada and the guy who was not, the guy said to me I work harder than anybody else here and I just shuddered to have him here. Because people would say this to me when I was in uniform. I work harder than anybody else, in fact I work more than anybody else and my mother has cancer and in fact not only does my mother have cancer but her sister has cerebral palsy and my car has a knock and engine. And I've just done, and I got a letter of accommodation last year from the chief of naval operations and I've just done a wonderful job and you could sometimes Rick Orwood let you go on for some time and then he would say when you went home last night to go home to the right house and you say yeah I went on right house, wife made pot roast, oh he cursed a lot and I'm certainly not going to curse here because I'm not the kind of person but he would say essentially your wife have cancer when you and your sister and pinging the engine and hadn't slept for two days and you still made home the right house. Well yeah, if you can do all that why can't you do the little security thing I ask you to, if you're going to do the stuff right on your time why can't you do the stuff right on my time, why is it you only make mistakes on my time and you do the stuff right on your time, why the hell do I have to, you know, this you can just see where this is going to degenerate into a situation you don't want to listen to and it would, it would just go, it would just degenerate, it would just degenerate and the animal really had a really good sense here but you didn't, if you were the, if you were the talky too you probably didn't, you probably did not appreciate as much as it was humorous to other people watching who were fools if they smiled anyway but it was a good point right why in the world do you ever make mistakes and in the nuclear power program you can't afford to and that is the culture nuclear power program and in fact I said in my book the really interesting metric I think is that in 50 years the Soviet Union and Russia afterwards continue to have nuclear accidents and their forces and there have been none in the Navy and that's an interesting metric that there are none versus I told up 13 and open literature he had a third one and you won't like the third one because no military audience does or semi military audience or anything else and and I won't phrase the way he did it but it was actually much stronger than this he gave this in 1954 out at Naval Post Crisis School and essentially was you are not a valuable person if you do not argue with authority to the point of disrespect and he meant that he did he let his staff do it he did it and he lived it now I have never worked for anybody since that would permit it certainly won't happen in industry and canally I haven't worked for anybody in the Navy that put up with it nearly as well but Rick over would when I was 26 years old and he was 69 force year I was a full attendant now I wasn't what beyond ears I was a full attendant I'll give me example let's we'll take a minor example one it's just a typical daily day-to-day thing one day something happened on a ship that wasn't that good and it made the captain nervous and we had red phones at times so the captain called the president United States and he talked to President Nixon and he told him he had a problem and President Nixon not knowing a lot about apparently not being really knowing a lot about nuclear physics said okay I'll look into this and the president Nixon called Admiral Rick or because Admiral Rick was the only guy he knew that did know something about nuclear physics and he happened to have animal Rick over his forced our nomination on his desk so he had a name he didn't call the C&O or anybody else he just called Rick over and Rick over apparently thought he ought to know about this before the president so he calls my captain back and he apparently didn't like the answer my captain gave him so he said where's Dave Oliver well this is not good when a forced our Admiral knows a lieutenant by name but there's a reason there was a reason I what happens is Rick over interviewed me for nine hours before he'd sent me there because there there were some other problems with the ship I mean there were this is not a this is the first nuclear submarine the Nautilus and there had been some problems and Rick over it's sort of you know he interviewed me for nine hours and he told me go fix it and I written it back and said this son of a bitch can't be fixed it it's just screwed up and I written it via the chain of command I'd written 27 pages attached about why this couldn't be fixed and recommended several other people be court-martialed and I'd sent it via them to because I was a full lieutenant and I had and I knew I had a judgment to understand this and I'd gotten an answer back which didn't agree with me unfortunately I didn't keep any things I just ball them up and threw them away when they didn't agree with me anyway and I was told to fix it and they really they relieved some of the guys I have no idea why I knew my name anyway so Rick over says I said a bunch of profane things and then he said what's going on essentially and I said I knew what was going on you wouldn't have been called I didn't say that I said yeah I am no I you know here's what's going on I say I said I'm not quite sure but I'm gonna fix it he says can you fix it I said sure now what 26 year old tenant doesn't say sure I had no idea what that was going on if I knew what's going on we wouldn't have this problem anyway says you need help no I don't need help same deal right I'm 26 years old I do not need any help the interesting thing is Rick would just accept that I said no and then he said I said wait wait now anybody knows anything about nuclear reactors there are some people here know something about new characters I said I would like a little DI water now what happens is you want to keep the reactor core covered and I thought there might be a reason that I might have some need for water you cover with water I said I need some water I might need some water says you want any other help I said no I don't want your goddamn help or words that effect that actually stronger than and he hangs up a phone and I go back to work on it takes me eight hours to solve this problem because I'm not there's some fault fits and starts and some false starts and I have some problems with this the interesting part is we're in a major city the president of the United States has been called he's going I assume can't leave not knowing a lot about Washington having only spent about 14 years there that probably other people hear about this anyway nobody comes down to the ship nobody bothers me except I get a call after about half an hour and a guy says Lieutenant Oliver animal York is on the pier driving a water truck he wants to know tell you he's going to be up there until you tell him he can go and I thought okay might as well sit there because I don't think animals do a lot else I mean you know that works for me it's really an interesting guy and he never ever said anything about to me and the rest I mean I knew him for 20 more years and I ran it I mean we ran in we did lots there were lots of times more that I disagreed him over really big things where I would we would end up we did something once I'll give you an example let me give you this example this you will not believe this but it's not even the most outrageous thing I did turn he sent a team to examine my ship I was the executive I was not even CEO he sent a team to examine a ship the examination it was to check check and one of the checks was whether or not we had to symmetry whether a check in radiation you said radiation badges we had this film and you would check to see how much radiation exposure had and they had this new deal where they brought film in and your guys would expose it would expose develop it and read it and so my guys did that and guys I'd personally trained they did this and they read it and it was out of spec and so they failed us down in Portsmouth I'm done I'm down in Mississippi Pasco I hated that ship here and so and they leave they fail us so I think about that that night now here is the problem here are the options I have trained this guy inadequately who did it well you can throw that sucker out because I am not did not train anybody inadequately the film is screwed up okay that's the possibility Kodak Kodiak whatever the Kodak probably could do that or it has been exposed wrong by whoever is doing the sources so we have three different options one of them is impossible right so I go to the our bank the next day take out the kids fund for college get two volunteers give me $1,000 and I send one of them to become employed by Kodak and one of them to go up to Bethesda Naval Hospital to investigate the sources because I figure that's where they expose it guy goes up gets employed by Kodak is a cleaner second night there he breaks into the files hypothetically breaks into the files he's just cleaning and one of them pops open and he finds the files and finds out that they have had a bunch of film that's failed that they failed and they went ahead and sold it to the Navy and it's our doses right Xerox is the files that's that are sort of gets that proof comes home the other guys goes to Bethesda finds out the guys exposing it do not understand the radiation is a square one over square law thinks it's a one over L law gets this gets you know goes in talks to him again and gets a tape and comes back to me with the tape okay so I got these guys dead right so my CEO has gone off on leave after we fail leaving me to train the true crew which leaves me in charge so I write a memo message to Admiral Rick over and I document the fact that his guys who are the charge of exposing film are screwed up one they've allowed this inadequate vendor to sell them film that's whatever and two they've haven't instituted a proper check to and so I did and so I demand an apology and that we be certified that we be certified whatever it is good immediately and any apologize the fleet because my reputation has been harmed so this is before I meld and so I get an email the interesting thing is so I get an email saying you're to pick up this guy at the airport you're going to be reinspected tomorrow and I'm really irritated by this okay and by the way I'm directed by name to pick this guy up which just you're taking more so I go down and pick a sky which is a guy by the way you sent me the email last night and I go pick him up in the airport he didn't want to speak to me he wants to go have a drink we go in and we go in this place to have a drink and sits down he has two vodka and Collins he won't even speak to me anyway and then he says okay here's the deal I have to buy you I have to pay my trip down and back with my own money I have to buy you a dinner I have to pay for your drinks I have to sign this thing saying you're certified and then I go back and I get my butt chewed by the Admiral tomorrow morning eight o'clock but I am the guy who controls your certification not you so this is not an apology and you are not getting certified and he goes back but and then about a month two months later we really we reading the paper that Kodak got fined a hundred and fifty million dollars for selling an accurate film the Navy so the interesting thing is I always thought was you could do just anything as long as you're right as far as we're going now he was never going to publicly say you know he was going to control he was going to keep control of who was the certifying authority I don't care but the same time no matter what I did as long as I was right and as long as it improved safety he didn't care that's the kind of guy was it was really fascinating person and that was not the worst thing anyway be happy to take questions sir in the early 1960s in the command of staff course us young guys are there one of our number was called for an interview in a snowstorm yes and he arrived down and this is what he relayed back to us around the table when he got back he arrived there and there was a civilian sitting there in a desk and he started to he told him his name and so forth and this guy started asking him questions which made the air of his stand up on in that call constant and you know and he really he lost all interest in being being part of this organization because of this individual was there such an individual there were you would go in and you would have three interviews with three different people who worked for Rick over and then you would talk to Rick over and the three individuals were members of the staff anyway you haven't you'd have three naval officers normally it depends when they were but they're not naval officers there were normally two were civilians and one was a naval officer and the interviews let's talk about the interviews for a while because a minute if you don't them interviews are famous infamous and let me tell you what my view of the interviews are for those of you first of all you have to understand that Rick over is it was a real introvert as as I mentioned and he did and there were lots of things that he did which were not good leadership but that only because I don't think you could do them any differently when I teach leadership courses I talked to people and I say if you want to be a good you want to be a leader you need to learn as many different management techniques as possible and so that you can explore them and find the ones that work for you and try different ones so you can learn how to make them work and expand your capabilities so that you know how to so you become better at using a technique that works with the person you were working with or the people you're working with and the situation because you don't want to be the person always using a hammer or only use a hammer and screwdriver because there's too many people like that can't I and most leadership books are written by somebody who doesn't even understand that the what they're doing only works for their personality now Linda and I both run really big organizations Linda's licensed in six states ran a 90 billion dollar organization so we use completely different techniques she's much much better at at at software techniques I understand what you have to do is you're trying to learn all different tools to use for different situations Rick over didn't do that and he didn't do it if you knew him it was a it was great flaw and what it meant can only was he could actually deal with the spectrum of people that work for him he could deal really well with this group right over here this group were those people who were terribly self-confident and could in didn't need to ever be stroked but she's never gonna do it the rest of the people like this that he really needed he didn't deal well with all okay and a whole bunch of us would we didn't spend a bunch of time dealing with our peers and everybody else because you need these guys and record didn't do it I mean it's one of the flaws but the interview process was really interesting because it was it was really a good process and here's why nuclear submarines it's the most stressful thing I've ever seen and Rick over knew it and the reason he knew it is he couldn't do it Rick over had failed Rick over had been an executive officer of a submarine and failed to screen the command he then gone to surface ships and his the command tour of the smallest least useful surface ship which was a minesweep had been three months instead of the normal year or two he then gone to be an engineering duty officer and at the age of 46 he had been specifically directed to have no one work for him so he's an 06 with nobody working for him okay so he doesn't screen for command of a submarine he gets relief for causing if you really read his command tour you could pick a z you could at least pick six things to relieve him for although I haven't seen a relief for cause letter but you could see him because it couldn't do it and and if you read and even you read it you read the things he did write and he doesn't it has no clue about right and he has no clue about people and I can give you a lots of example I could give you I consider and tell you things he talked to me where he had no clue he would do brilliant things and then he would do something incredibly stupid that involved people and it turns out I do not need to be stroked you understand I'm saying I am a cobro about that sort of crap I couldn't care less I want to go kill somebody I don't want to be stroked you're wasting my goddamn time but there are a whole bunch of people who like to be stroked and we all know that right and you need them he couldn't do that he never changed and I don't think ever could but what he did do is he knew himself and he knew what he was going to ask we lost in the 60s 12% of our officers died from they were killed and we had an extraordinary amount of suicides what Rick over knew what we were recruiting was recruiting essentially all Phi Beta Kappa from the top 10% of schools and these are all guys that since the third grade have been told that they're the greatest things in slice spread well you know what you may be the greatest things in slice spread but it doesn't mean that you should go into nuclear submarines there's all sorts of things you maybe want to do but it doesn't mean my children did not go in and I did not want them to go in they're not built like that there's been no four-star submarine or whose son has ever made it past lieutenant commander by the way there's no four-star submarine or that I would like to marry my sister I mean you know it's you understand what I'm saying I mean because I'm a nice person but some of those other guys some of those other guys are not you understand I'm saying they're just not they're not the pleasant type of person right love see when your wife won't vote for you right I mean she did have she did she did approve tapping my phones once you know okay but only once anyway what Bricko was trying to do was screen those guys out and they don't want candidly you don't want you never want to accept that you I mean and guys react badly to that but it was really for the best purpose and when I saw that later on as I got to be more senior and you try it but most guys can they don't look guys in the eyes and say you go you need to go out of this you need to do something else but you do I had our best friend I give you the first example in my first ship was my best friend who was actually a couple years senior to me but we sort of worked off of a policy of whoever was best and he was working for me he was much smarter I was and he could do three things brilliantly but if he gave him for nothing got done and I watched this for a while watch this while I said you got to go you got to go to someplace else in there you cannot do nuclear submarines well he did not he didn't want to accept it you know I mean he didn't want to accept that yeah I understand that and finally I just I I moved him and he went and he really got upset and he went to Bureau and he went to Bureau and got the Bureau to give him another chance on another ship and he was there for four months and he has a heart attack massive heart attack at the age of 29 right and when he recovered in the heart attack he became the maintenance officer at a trailer camp because that's all he could do anymore I had a master's nuclear physics and he became a maintenance officer at a trailer camp because he wouldn't listen to me I mean you know I'm saying what Rico was trying to do was to get those really good guys and screen off those guys who didn't understand how stressful this is going to be you know and haven't go do something else that was good for the lies but none I'm like that no I don't know that answer I know there wasn't a strong relationship but I don't know the answer that yes ma'am I don't know the answer I I talked to chief of name operation and animal Richardson told me they'd done the investigation they believe they have that under control and they and they are fixing it I thought it was good candidly that when that came out if you noticed what happened was the minute it came out instead of a sign it to a fourth tier or in other words instead of having a lieutenant commander public affairs officer talk about it the chief of naval operation personally briefed it when you know as soon as it came out taking responsibility for something like that I thought it was the right culture approach you just I really thought John did that right we will see right if that will we will see I don't know I'm not John tells me he's fixed it sir I talk about that in a book because the thresher and the scorpion the thresher the animal took a thresher really hard and I took and I and I took scorpion earlier let me tell you what thresher and scorpion are out in it in the book is about culture change okay let me tell me be very candid about this the first submarine here's what's going on Portsmouth naval shipyard is building diesel submarines right Portsmouth naval shipyard belongs to the submarine belongs to the engineering duty officers that are building submarines for the Navy general electric boat is a privately built shipyard Rickover goes to Portsmouth and says I want to build a Nautilus and this and the admiral in charge of Portsmouth the engineering duty officer says no we're really busy building diesel submarines for the past he doesn't say for the past but he said that's what it was and Rickover picks up his phone and calls electric boat and says would you like to build Nautilus and the guy said yes and so they built Nautilus a look so general dynamics built Nautilus and they built the next seven classes of nuclear submarines okay and they put it into general dynamics at electric boat they put in the standards of nuclear power it's a different way of looking at things it's a different stand right I'm talking because we have talked we understand this this this concept of and Portsmouth continues to bumble along with the concepts of diesel boats but but it is the but the shipyard now see is controlled by diesel boat guys and they keep saying we want to get rid of this guy Rickover and we want to put in our own guy and we want to get rid of Rickover and we're going to to replace him with a guy who is a diesel boat guy in fact we're going to send them up to Portsmouth and have him take over the shipyard there and he's the guy we're going to have it's not we're going to have replaced Rickover was since we can get we can talk the Congress into firing him and so they send him to Portsmouth and then they say they talked to and I forget who it was I think we're going to build the first class of nuclear submarine because the first seven ships were essentially ones of a kind or small classes of three or four the first big class of submarines which is going to be a 594 class we're going to build a Portsmouth naval shipyard just the way we ought to build classes of ships and they give it to that Admiral to build at Portsmouth okay and that is the Thresher class and so they build the Thresher class now Admiral Rickover is technically responsible for just the reactor plant and the reactor equipment and Portsmouth is responsible the rest of it and what now see an naval ship system command has done instead of keeping control of it at now see what they've decided to do because they decided to do this in World War War II is they've decided to give out control to each of the shipyards you can build you know a lot of flowers grow you guys go ahead build what a hell you want to we're not going to be in chart we're not going to keep firm control Rickover does not do this Rickover keeps control you build it exactly the way I specified etc the shipyards are building the reason I feel so strongly about this is that goddamn guys nearly killed me several times and you have to understand I was in I was engaged in hand-to-hand battle with these guys for much of my life okay or you may not realize I'm feel strongly about this so Portsmouth builds this they build in all or build the Thresher Rickover goes out in the first ship of every class he goes out in the Thresher it goes out does a steep dive etc and and they survive except they have some leaks they have some leaks in a piping they don't have any leaks in the piping it goes to the reactor plant because Rickover has decided that the way that that Portsmouth puts together piping is unsafe and he welds all the piping it goes to the reactor plant but what Portsmouth's doing several of the shipyards doing is they're still brazing piping if you ever still raise pipe anybody still raise pipe still brazing piping is essentially you throw some still braze in and you just pray that it's going to hold together I if you've never done it you it's one of those things that you have to you have to experience huh no it's not as good as solder it's it it's it's really hard to check is the problem right it's really hard to check unless you do a radiography check you can do a radiograph but it's really hard to check because you can get a partial seal which will hold but you don't know when it's going to fail in other words you can get like a 20 or 30 percent check and it'll hold for a long time and then it'll suddenly fail okay so Nav C everybody know what Nav C is that's the guys in Washington Nav C tells Portsmouth to to reach to radiograph each one of those check those whatever I just said joints before that ship goes to sea they get I don't remember the number they get 18% done to do they have to take off they have to take off the lagging do that they get 18% done now here they're told in writing this is not one of these things where I call them up and writing told it they get 18% done and the ship guard commander okay sending them back to sea one of those joints separates and that's what kills them all on that cruise the next cruise now the reason that I feel pretty strongly about this and this happened several years ago is many of us feel that that subsequent investigation was covered up because the animal is the guy who approved that underway and it was never entered in a record that question I just told you it was never entered in a record although it was known and that's the joint that failed and what Nav C tried to say was when that joint failed by the way it's scram it sprayed water on the nuclear instrumentation a scram reactor and what they tried to say was that since the reactor it scrammed that Rick over had lost the ship okay as opposed to saying that Portsmouth's approach had done it anyway I still feel emotional a whole bunch of my friends died okay that's that's what happened Scorpion stories in the book it turned out that I recommended something because it was really dangerous a policy that we carried over from diesel boats I I recommended that this be changed because I knew it was going to kill somebody nobody would goddamn listen to me and the guy all the guys in Scorpion died I changed on my ships because I was not about to not change it and you may have figured this out I just do things and they didn't change on the rest of ships and on Scorpion they go kill they got killed anyway who's in the question sir maybe you want to publish your own fitness report do you know do you anybody know yogi coffin remember yogi I'm all yogi coffin I'm all yogi coffins a really good guy yogi coffin I was looking there when I was writing a book I had to get some dates yogi coffin had the audacity to say when I was an instant that he thought that I sometimes should pay more attention to my instructors instead of myself and I had not read it at the time but when I read it I was hurt that he would say that I just I was hurt that's what I was do you believe women should be on some of yes absolutely it's astounding to me I had the first 30 ships I had for some of the first 30 ships that had women on board once I got to 30% of the crew was women the professionalism took a step jump up as well as the entire feeling of the ship it was astounding to me how much improvement it made I was really I got a couple more minutes I'll give you an example we're out we went to Colbay Alaska everybody anybody been to Colbay John you ever flown out at Colbay Alaska there's a big there's a big airstrip because we used it to to get supplies to Russia during World War II there's a big airstrip up there and we had never taken we hadn't been back this since World War II and Reagan wanted us to go up we wanted to take all the submarines and take them out of the United States and show the Russians that even if they bomb nuked the United States we would still continue to have all our submarines and we continued to nuke the Soviet Union so one time whenever to hell one time we took all of our submarines and deployed or heck I took half of them to Hedy and half of them to Colbay was November so I figured if I went to Tahiti Linda would not like that so I figured I better go to Colbay and so I went up to Colbay with with about I don't know eight thousand eight thousand people and tenders and stuff and and and all of the boomers and I was going to outfit them up there and I was you know set up and I wanted to use it to I was also I was having trouble the previous admiral I'd relieved was didn't understand women at all and so he had pregnancy rate of about 11% and he'd had he'd had seven officers say they were raped and he had transferred them and not prosecuting them in and so I Linda's going to hate it if I use his name but I didn't like him and I so I had taken each of the women and I'd reopened the cases and I'd prosecuted each of the men and brought the women back and by the time I left in two years I dropped the unwanted pregnancy rate down to a third of 1% anyway and I took these people and we went out and we went up into the cold and I said but I knew what I knew I mean I mean it's just like going to high school right and so I said here's the deal machine guns weigh about 120 pounds right 120 pounds is separated into two pieces and an M and an M14 weighs about what eight pounds I've forgotten now but so what happens is is you don't want you give the women you make the men carry the machine guns then the men are going to say the women are can't carry the load etc so you have to understand you have to be big enough to understand this thing so I said here's the deal I want women to carry the machine guns and the men can carry rifles and and then my staff and everybody said you are crazy Admiral they can't carry machine guns and I said I'm the admiral you guys are not you will do it my goddamn way and I will court-martial any man I see carrying a machine gun well they knew I was crazy anyway so what happens is you know they break so the women struggle off the quarter deck and out in the snow carrying these you know 80 pounds of rifle plus their backpack because they're going to go out we're going to we're as co-war you know we're they're going to go out and establish firing teams to prevent the Soviets from circling around and getting into place now I am not stupid as soon as they get out of my sight and get around behind the camp the guys are going to say god the admiral is stupid let me take that thing right you take my rifle but it means that in two weeks when they come back there is nobody that can say that on board that ship right because if they say I'm going to court-martial some of it but it means that they have to band together to protect themselves from me and they can't take it out on each other right and they got to live for two weeks making up excuses and stories to prevent the admiral from hearing about how they managed to lie to him now my staff actually never did understand honest to god they kept saying boy I think we should go out there and tell them that you changed your mind I'm not changing mine I may go out there and look and check well I don't think you should do that I'm thinking about it I had a dumb staff but you know I mean so I did that and they came back and I didn't think those women are going to get up that gangway I thought they're going to break the goddamn necks anyway so we get up and suddenly morale is really working you know I mean and so we go out see and and we get rammed by I don't know what happened something happened bad and we get in a big storm and we end up getting an 80 foot hole in a hole 80 foot hole in a hole underneath the water line turns out that's not good by the way I'm giving that to you in case you've never been on a big ship but that's not good but you can fix it what you do is you take your mattresses you don't want to sleep anyway take your mattresses put them down there you put your shoring down there and all that stuff and then you can do underwater welding and this is a big repair ship got three thousand people with it now my co wanted a banded ship I don't know what the heck he thought he was going to go up there in Alaska I mean the bears are much better anyway I don't know where he thought he was going to go anyway so I had I guess 80 welders on there so they get down there now the water is cold right it's about 28 degrees because the seawater is it's freezing and so what you're in the ice and so it's salty and so you'll get down to 28 degrees and still be uh not frozen inside the ship and so they're welding and so they weld and weld and weld and weld and mine are my big problems in the board ship which I knew and I wasn't sure how I was going to do it is the chief welder was a real pain in my butt with respect to women and I wasn't sure what I was going to do besides just take a two by four and hit him in the head okay but everybody was sort of worried about dying and we are you know it's ship had inclined over a little bit and all there you know there was everybody sort of knew there was this was a problem and we we're moving and after about after about nine hours of these 80 people being welled in 79 of them decided they had sort of about had it with standing in the water because it was cold and I had one welder who made it through with I tired hours welded at final seam and that chief went over and hit that guy on the back of the head and said son you are hot stuff and that kid flew back his helmet because you get to the helmet and said thank you chief and my problems went away right and I'm serious about so two years later we go to Gulf War and General Schwarzkopf who is not the most ERA person that one I ever met if you don't know him comes out and ends up saying there's two ships that are most extraordinary ships I had it's there I want to come out and give them awards two ships of the only two ships that were had women aboard it's a 30% statistic about part for the course it's one of the things where you have to get you have to get to that point if you don't get to that point you end up with you get groups where you have 20 men and one woman and that's not good because she doesn't feel comfortable you need once you get about 30% you know you always end up with little groups and where you have ETs and whatever you need to have groups where you always have three or four women in each group you know what I mean just where you you don't randomly end up with 20 guys and one woman because that's not that's not cool it just it just works humans are not cool that way it's like high school you gotta remember you're always dealing with nothing changes from high school right so 30% you don't end up with those things if you don't if you only have 10% you end up with you end up with situations I'm sorry I keep you go on stories like this the electrical panel story I mean that is probably one of my favorites that's what happens when you're old you know stories it's an interesting read you'll be highly entertained back here on Tuesday for a little action in the North Atlantic in 1942 and then next Thursday stop just for a second let me do one more thing I'm sorry I apologize I have to show you something really cool which you've never seen though see that that's in the book but what happens is this is really cool and I bet I bet you've never seen this this is up here this is handed to me by Gorbachev aboard Gorky on December 3rd 1989 George Bush so what is that well it's obviously a dicked up chart because what it is it can't be a real chart it has the Soviet Union as the center of the world right so what is it that is what Gorbachev gave President Bush when he said the Cold War is over his words according to JD Williams who was six fleet commander were what you remember those that uncle and a brother who down in Norfolk who gave the Soviets the submarine crypto the Walker Brothers the Walker Brothers did this about 10 years before and so they actually had all of the submarine crypto and and it sort of doesn't matter if you understand submarines it matters in a way but we we talked to submarines we don't let submarines ever say anything and when you talk to them when you commanded them you would do it in a general way in which you'd let the guys use their own judgment you understand what I'm saying so you could so they anyway so what Gorbachev said to President Bush was we have tracked we have had your crypt we have tried to kill submarines for 10 years we have not killed one we quit and he hands him this chart and President Bush signed it and gave it to JD Williams Admiral JD Williams who gave a copy to me and I used this to give all my major commanders because I thought all the guys you know really spent a whole bunch of lives doing this business and gave up those business I thought it was really an interesting thing and given even George Kennan has said if you you know we'll surround this we'll surround this beast and we'll let him essentially eat himself and that's the way we'll do this and I thought it was really impressive to see it all worked out anyway I just think it's a historically really impressive thank you I'm sorry but I didn't I didn't show anyway sorry