By Robert A. Hamilton
Day Staff Writer
When the Navy wanted to see whether a welded submarine hull would withstand greater pressure, a Navy shipyard said it couldn’t be done. Electric Boat welded the Cuttlefish.
When then-Capt. Hyman G. Rickover wanted to build the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, a Navy shipyard said it couldn’t be done. EB built the Nautilus.
As an admiral, Rickover wanted a tiny nuclear-powered research submarine; again, EB rose to the challenge.
There is more technology per cubic inch in a submarine than anything else on earth, even the space shuttle, shipyard officials are fond of saying. And almost every time the Navy wanted to try something new, it turned to EB.
The company has built a succession of prototype submarines, one-of-a-kind boats like the Tullibee, the Narwhal, Glenard P. Lipscomb, and the Seawolf SSN 575, commissioned in 1957.
“I think we knew we had something that was unique and very good, but we tried not to think too far ahead - we left that to others. We just hoped that the interesting work was going to continue,” recalls Herbert E. Berry, a former EB vice president with 42 years of shipyard experience.
“As a young engineer, the thing I remember the most was, if you could do the job, you could get the job. There was a lot of free rein. You were not only allowed but you were encouraged to think outside the box. At the time, when it came to nuclear submarines, there really was no ‘box.’ If you had the ideas and could do the job, EB gave you the technical responsibility.”
And EB continues to try to improve that record, pushing the Navy for permission to proceed with its newly designed electric drive system on one of the early ships of the Virginia class, which went into production last year, with the first scheduled for delivery about 2004.
“The leadership here recognizes the need to support initiatives like this,” said Vice President Frederick H. Harris, because only with innovation is the company going to produce the revolutions in undersea warfare that will keep the U.S. Navy out in front of any competition.
The Nautilus challenge
Morgan Daboll of Salem worked in the design department at EB from 1935 until 1977, including a stint on the group that designed the prototype power plant for the Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear submarine.
“Our biggest problem was making sure that the Westinghouse engineers understood the concept of port and starboard, and forward and aft, on a submarine,” Daboll recalls.
Though they were incorporating technology into submarines that had never been attempted before, Daboll said everyone was confident it would work.
“We weren’t allowed to think otherwise - it was going to work, that was that. When you had the admiral hovering over you - of course, he was only a captain then - you didn’t dare think any other way.”
There were a number of issues that had to be worked out, such as balancing the submarine given the weight of the reactor and the shielding in the neighboring bulkheads, and designing a piping system that would accommodate the extremely high-pressure, high-temperature water that would be carried around the boat.
A small break and hundreds of gallons of water could flash instantly to steam.
“After the Nautilus, I kind of lost interest,” Daboll recalls. “That was the submarine. I always thought I would work any hours I would have to, to promote this program. I was very excited about it.
“And when it was done, I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under my feet. I guess you could say after that, it was all anti-climax.”
Seawolf task was different
But for others, even the second nuclear boat represented unique challenges. Unlike the reactor on the Nautilus, which used the reactor to superheat water past its boiling point, the Seawolf employed a reactor that employed metallic sodium as a coolant.
Commissioned in 1957, Seawolf took President Dwight D. Eisenhower on board a few months after it was placed into service, the first time the nation’s commander in chief had gotten underway on nuclear power.
Late that year, the NBC television news was broadcast off its decks, and in early 1958, while taking part in training exercises, it was diverted to investigate a report of a foreign submarine off the Atlantic coast, the first use of a nuclear submarine in anti-submarine warfare.
But the sodium reactor was unreliable, and by late 1958 Seawolf pulled into EB for a conversion to a pressurized water reactor.
Seawolf’s failure did not deter the Navy from trying out new features and hull designs. The Triton, ordered as the finishing touches were being put on the Seawolf, was huge by 1950s standards - 6,600 tons and 447 feet long, more than half again as large as the Nautilus - and the only nuclear submarine with twin propellers.
Wayne Magro, program manager for the newest Seawolf, the SSN 21 commissioned in 1997, came to EB in 1959, just as many of the new programs were getting under way. He recalls the Skate, which was not one of a kind - the Navy had its own shipyards build three copies ultimately - and the Skipjack, first of a class of six.
Those classes represented major advances in quieting and speed. There are still submarine captains in the area who refer to the Skipjack as the sportscar class. The boat even had subway straps installed around the control room for people to grab onto during the wilder rides, Magro said.
Same systems
“Yeah, we were doing things we had never done before, but if you look at a submarine, it’s all the same systems,” Magro said.
“Maybe on this boat it goes left, and this boat it goes right, but it’s a hydraulic system on both boats. It’s got radar, a periscope, torpedo tubes and trim and drain systems, it’s got valves all over the place. It may be a different design, but the same basic ideas were there, and what we had were guys who were very knowledgeable about those systems.”
He takes considerable pride in the Lafayette, the first submarine designed from the keel up to fire ballistic missiles, which took 33 weeks from launch to delivery.
“That’s the kind of mood we were in,” Magro said.
“We did that out of personal pride. I was a worker most of the time, and I needed the money because I had a young family, but I have to tell you we came in seven days a week because we felt that we wanted to put this thing to sea. At the other end of the country, someone was building a missile, and we were building the delivery vehicle, and we wanted to get there on time. We had a schedule, someone had set a goal, but it wasn’t the schedule that was driving it. It was just the mindset that we had at that time.”
The quiet submarine
The Narwhal, commissioned in 1969, used a natural convection reactor that didn’t need noisy pumps, and consequently was the quietest submarine ever at the time of its commissioning.
EB delivered the Tullibee in 1960, and the Lipscomb in 1974, both with early versions of electric drive - and even they were unique unto themselves, because Tullibee operated on AC power, Lipscomb on DC.
EB is hoping to build on the lessons it learned from those boats and incorporate electric drive in the submarines of the 21st century, giving them not only a reliable and quiet source of propulsion power, but the capability to divert engine power to exotic new weapons that are only on the drawing board now.
Cookie-cutter subs
For a while in the 1970s and ’80s, EB turned out cookie-cutter submarines - Los Angeles- and Ohio-class submarines that were exceptional by the standards of the rest of the world, but which integrated only incremental improvements.
“I’m not sure that 15 years ago we would have supported something like electric drive all that well,” Harris acknowledged. “But we’re behind it 100 percent now.”
Magro agreed: “Today, the philosophy is that if someone doesn’t want to do it the exact same way Magro would do it, as long as they get it done, in a cost effective manner and meets the quality standards, they can go do it.
“That’s the only way to grow somebody.
I’ve made some bum calls, but the company has always stood up for me, and
if I caused a problem they let me go off and fix it. That’s the attitude
you need if you’re going to have innovation.”