Bringing a new technology to life:

A comparative study of Hyman Rickover and John Fisher

By Chris Manteuffel

Introduction

The introduction of a new technology into a fleet is always a matter of interest. Admiral of the Fleet Baron John Fisher of Kilverstone, who introduced the Dreadnought into naval circles, introduced new technology into his fleet. Admiral Hyman Rickover, the man who is seen as the father of naval nuclear propulsion, is another man who introduced new technology to his navy. From studying the similarities of these two men, conclusions can be drawn as to what it takes to push new technologies into a navy. This is not a joint biography, instead it is an analysis based on biography.

Any discussion of early 20^th century surface warfare centers on a pair of connected themes: John Fisher and Dreadnought. Her all big gun design gave her firepower, at long range, equal to three older ships, and with her steam turbines she was several knots faster than those previous ships¹. Dreadnought shaped the future of naval combat, and for the 35 years thereafter remained the center of naval attention.

The building of Dreadnought was the start of a naval arms race. Countries as disparate as Japan, Austria-Hungary, and Brazil raced to build more Dreadnoughts than their rivals². The tension leading up to World War One was influenced by this naval “cold war”. The arms race in the period 1905-1914 was caused, in part, by the launching of Dreadnought.

Thirty years later, another man would be linked to his creation in another cold war- Admiral Hyman Rickover and the nuclear powered submarine, Nautilus. The nuclear powered submarine dramatically changed the manner of submarine warfare. Whereas before submarines had only been able to travel short distances underwater, and shorter still at high speed, the effectively unlimited range that the nuclear core gave Nautilus meant that she could steam submerged as long as she wanted. She could cross oceans at 20 knots submerged³. The best US World War Two boats could cover 100 nautical miles at 2 knots submerged, or burst for a few minutes at 9 knots⁴. This high underwater speed was a true advantage over the previous generation of submarines.

John Fisher was born in a generation long before those submarines. He was born in 1841, joined the Royal Navy (RN) in time for the Crimean War, serving on one of the last completely sail powered warships⁵. A renowned gunnery and torpedo expert, he only saw action in a few colonial bombardments against fortifications⁶. However, he did lead the Mediterranean fleet for several years, and did have experience in command⁷. When he became First Sea Lord in 1904 he instituted a series of reforms to the Navy. One of them was the building of two new warships, Dreadnought and Invincible⁸. He convened a board to design these two new ships, and almost a year after he assumed command the Dreadnought was laid down. She was completed 366 days later⁹.

Admiral Rickover was born in 1900, and graduated from the Naval Academy in the class of 1922¹⁰. He was an engineering specialist, and served on several destroyers and a battleship in that specialty before transferring into the submarine service¹¹. He rose to executive officer of his submarine, but was transferred back to shore duty with the Inspector of Naval Materiel¹². He did his next tour on another battleship before finally receiving his own command- the minesweeper Finch of the Asiatic fleet. After a few months in command he became an Engineering Duty Officer, a personal choice which provided challenges but deprived him of sea command¹³. He served with great skill and authority as the head of the electrical section of the Bureau of Ships (BUSHIPS) during World War 2¹⁴. After that he eventually became head of the Naval Reactors (NR) group, and controlled the naval nuclear reactors for the United States Navy (USN) and Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).

Fisher and Rickover, both of whom had long careers in the navy, became completely identified with one shipbuilding effort because they were technological entrepreneurs. A technological entrepreneur is someone who persuades an institution to accept a new technology, and manages to “sell” it to people at large. Both Hyman Rickover and John Fisher were technological entrepreneurs for new ships, that conferred on their respective fleets vast improvements in capability. In the process of selling these new ships, their personality became mixed with the ship, and they were connected with it. In this role, two admirals were alike in many respects. They had similar temperaments, vision, and willpower. They had similar devotion to their service, and both believed that they were doing their best for their navy. Both had to use political means to achieve their goals for the future of naval power. The two men had to fight naval tradition and force their new technology into the fleet. However, they did differ greatly in their understanding of technology. Rickover was a man who could feel whether something was engineered properly or not¹⁵. He was a manager, but also an engineer. Fisher, as a line officer, was not an engineer. His understanding of technology was much weaker. He had visions of what the navy should do, but often failed to understand the limitations of technology.

Personality

John Fisher had an air of strength about him. He had an unmistakeable broadness in his face, a strength that seemed to well up from his large chest and through his thick neck. He was tireless- at age 78 he would waltz around rooms at a high tempo¹⁶.

Fisher was a man for whom a compromise was out of the question. In his Memories he quoted a statement by Lord Horatio Nelson, the famed victor of Trafalgar, and then provided his own analysis of the statement: “It was not ‘Victory’ that Nelson ever desired. It was ‘Annihilation’!”¹⁷ Similarly with Fisher, he was not looking to win a negotiation, he was looking to win outright.

One of his favorite maxim’s, also quoted in his Memories, was this: “Never Deny: Never Explain: Never Apologise.”¹⁸ He was quite willing to argue his points, and defended them with considerable skill, but he was not willing to find a compromise. Winston Churchill, who worked with him in his second term as First Sea Lord, reports that Fisher was often known to say “If any subordinate opposes me, I will make his wife a widow, his children fatherless, and his home a dunghill.”¹⁹ He was willing to go to any extreme’s to annihilate someone who disagreed with him.

This inability to compromise is reflected in the design of the Invincible and the light battlecruisers of his second term as First Sea Lord. Fisher did not see warships as compromises between hitting power, speed, and defensive power. He saw the extremes of high speed, high gun power and weak armor to be more effective than the more conventionally designed ships²⁰. He saw compromise in shipbuilding to be as ineffective as compromise in the political arena.

Fisher also had an active mind. While serving as Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean fleet, he delivered a series of lectures on naval tactics which were open to high ranking officers. Admiral Roger Bacon, a member of the “Fishpond”, the group of officers who gathered around Fisher, reports that Fisher’s style was unique, in that he didn’t speak as if he knew all the answers, but he engaged the minds of the listeners by asking for their help²¹.

One other aspect of Fisher’s mind was that he would be excited by an idea, and concentrate on it, and then realize it was bad and forget it. Ruddock Mackay, a biographer, calls this Fisher’s “smokescreen of ideas” to hide his intellect behind. One part of this smokescreen was a plan to fight the American-German fleets. Fisher even proposed moving the base of the Home Fleet to where it could intercept the American fleet as it crossed the ocean. Fisher’s comment “One might almost wish the United States would join Germany”, made in 1908, shows Fisher’s smokescreen of ideas²².

But he did have many good ideas, and seemed able to tell the difference between the wild ones and his realistic ones. He never moved the fleet to Lough Swilly to meet the Americans²³. But he did rearrange the dispositions of the fleet to increase efficiency²⁴. He was able to identify his boldness, and separate it from his rashness. He would make wild predictions or statements, but only considered actions.

Hyman Rickover was a small man. He was short and wiry, but like Fisher he seemed full of energy. He could work all day, and on Saturdays, and often late at night²⁵. Another admiral thought Rickover, “…a little Jew in the Naval Academy, … probably got kicked all over the place, and he had to be over-aggressive to overcome it…”²⁶. This tiny man also didn’t like to wear his uniform, in fact he wore his four star Admiral’s uniform only once, apparently²⁷. His authority came not from the uniform, or from his size, but from his personality. He said himself, on being told of his promotion to four stars, “I could do my job as a seaman second-class. Nature knows no rank.” ²⁸

He had a controlling personality. Others would just fall in line with what he wanted. When he arrived at Oak Ridge Laboratory he quickly gained control over the other Naval officers present, even though they had been specifically warned that they were not under his command²⁹. That was because he convinced the senior officer present, an Army officer, to let him write the fitness reports for the other navy personnel³⁰. It would merely be the first time that Rickover used his personality and naval regulations to advance the naval reactor project and his own position.

Rickover’s authority also came from hard work. He was always travelling or working. He directed his tireless energy towards the success of the NR branch. One of his favorite techniques for doing an inspection was to work all day, then take the mid-afternoon plane out to the inspection site, tour it till midnight or later, and then take the late sleeper back to Washington³¹. He was working two full days in one.

He expected the same level of work from everyone else. He expected them to put in long hours and not complain. He also expected them to take the abuse he gave them. In one case, a man actually started to clear out his desk after listening to a Rickover tirade. When one of his staff told him what was happening, Rickover promptly apologized³². This is suggestive of the atmosphere that Rickover wanted- one in which everybody found him intimidating. He was not afraid to sacrifice his own personality to the cause of nuclear reactors. He was driven only by the thought of making better nuclear reactors.

Though both men had abrasive personalities, both men were skilled politically. They did not need to compromise themselves to achieve their ends. They were able to use political skill to get what they wanted with very few concessions, even when it meant that most of the other admirals were angry at them.

Politics

Fisher’s reforms touched off a heated debate across the country. In naval circles, Fisher’s primary enemy was Admiral Lord Charles Beresford. Beresford was the leading critic of Fisher’s policies, but not the only one. The conservative press and other admirals also opposed Fisher’s plans³³. They were mostly defenders of the traditions that Fisher changed.

Fisher handled this by a new tactic. He recruited journalists whom he fed “ammunition” to provide stories³⁴. Some of this material was classified³⁵. This provided him with a steady stream of articles representing his point of view to the public. Arthur Marder, a historian who thought highly of Fisher, wrote “The only defense that can be made of [Fisher’s handing over of classified documents] is that without press support he believed his reforms stood no chance.”³⁶ Fisher limited his actions and potential allies in the political arena with his unwillingness to compromise. “Its only damn fools who argue” was one of his favorite maxims³⁷. He also had a history of ignoring people who didn’t agree with him. If the disagreement became large, he would ignore the person completely³⁸.

Fisher also tried to cut his opponents feet out from under them. When Beresford was appointed to head the Channel Fleet, (traditionally the best fleet command in the RN) Fisher created the Home Fleet, which took 3 battleships from the Channel Fleet. Fisher had found a way to decrease an opponents prestige and power. Few other navy men, even those who were neutral in the Fisher-Beresford affair, liked the idea of separate Home and Channel Fleets, feeling it violated unity of command³⁹. This attempt at reducing the prestige of Beresford caused a firestorm of opposition to Fisher, with many complaining that Fisher was too partisan to run the navy⁴⁰.

Hyman Rickover was partisan too, but for a different cause. He was partisan for the NR branch. He had had to fight hard to get the NR branch of BUSHIPS and the AEC, and he was firmly committed to it. Rickover’s power initially rested on Admiral Mills of BUSHIPS, who wanted Rickover’s unceasing energy devoted to the project⁴¹. Because of that, Rickover could talk to Mills and the Admiral would pay attention. This ear of the Admiral was a great help to Rickover. For example, Rickover convinced Mills to deliver a speech to the Atomic Energy Commission that was very critical of the AEC’s policies towards the Naval Nuclear Reactor program⁴². After that speech the AEC was shocked enough to give Rickover “dual authority”. This meant that Rickover would serve both the USN and the AEC. He could use this authority in many ways. He could serve as the representative of the Navy when talking to the AEC, and he could become the representative of the AEC when talking to the Navy⁴³. This gave him the ability to bypass many layers of command between him and those in authority. He used this authority to good effect. At one point, the Navy wasn’t convinced that Rickover would build the reactor for Nautilus in the time he said he could do it. He had already convinced the AEC he could. He pointed out to the General Board that it would be very embarrassing for the Navy if the AEC built the reactor and there was no submarine for it. Faced with this threat the General Board agreed to let him proceed with Nautilus⁴⁴.

Before Nautilus was completed, Rickover faced the largest political battle of all. It was that he was rapidly approaching the age of retirement, and if he was not promoted to Rear Admiral he would be retired. Two selection boards passed over Rickover, because, to Navy eyes, he was not versatile enough. The Navy wanted generalist officers, those who could be rotated from position to position. Rickover had spent long periods of time at individual jobs. This was a significant drawback for a promotion⁴⁵.

Some of Rickover’s friends mobilized public opinion to demand his retention and promotion. The first of these friends was Clay Blair Jr., a young Time-Life correspondent. He wrote the first articles (one in Time and one in Life) that attracted attention⁴⁶. However, Rickover did not bring this on himself- he at first even refused to be photographed for the story, and was not a source for the story⁴⁷.

Ray Dick, one of the original officers with Rickover, spearheaded the campaign to keep Rickover⁴⁸. The staff started turning to Congress, using the public opinion from Blair’s articles to mobilize the congressmen in power to keep Rickover. In one very good example of the strategy his staff used, they specifically had a pro-Rickover article published in the Boston Globe to get the attention of a Senator from Massachusetts who was Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the committee which had the power to reinstate Rickover⁴⁹. They also talked to Congressmen, trying to drum up support for Rickover.⁵⁰ A young Senator named Henry Jackson, on the committee which oversaw Nuclear matters, who had worked with Rickover before, also helped in the rallying of Senators on Rickover’s side⁵¹. Meanwhile, Blair’s new book, The Atomic Submarine and Admiral Rickover was going fine. He was working in an office near Rickover, and one of Rickover’s staff was responsible for informing him about the project⁵². The incoming Secretary of the Navy, Robert Anderson, asked for a copy of the manuscript to help him make a decision on Rickover’s fate⁵³. Rickover knew well what was happening, but remained “publicly aloof” from the entire matter⁵⁴. With the support of the Congress (established by NR’s two pronged technique of directly lobbying congressmen and working the press) the Senate Armed Services Committee threatened to hold up the promotion list, and the Navy gave in, and promoted him the next year⁵⁵.

This connection with Congress gave Rickover a powerful voice in the following years. The support that Rickover established in the early 1950’s he nourished and molded, using it to stay head of the NR branch for the next thirty years. He also used the ear of Congress as a weapon in future battles over Naval procurement. Rickover befriended the civilian leaders in power and skillfully turned that into a major advantage in the bureaucratic warfare that was rampant in the Navy.

Rickover was always a little embarrassed by how he came to be promoted. In fact, the official story of NR, Nuclear Navy by historians Richard Hewlett and Francis Duncan, only briefly mentions the politics involved in the battle for promotion. Instead, we are only told that “Rickover’s staff helped prepare the material” for a single Congressman’s speech.⁵⁶ The rest of the lobbying, by staff and press, is mentioned only en passim in the official history⁵⁷. This is because Rickover was breaking a long held tradition, that of the “Silent Service”, and not speaking to the press while on active duty. He did not mind breaking the tradition of accepting the rulings of the selection board because that custom would interfere with his goals for the NR branch by removing him as its head. But breaking the tradition of speaking to the press, he saw, was going too far.

Custom

Jacky Fisher waged a serious campaign against the customs and traditions of the Royal Navy. While Second Sea Lord he proposed the idea of unified admission and training procedures, for both engineering and line officers⁵⁸. He proposed, in effect, that engineering become like gunnery and navigation, just another area for a specialized officer who was still a line officer. Up until then, the engineers came from lower social classes. Because they worked down below in dirty, grimy facilities, they were looked down on by the “real” officers. But Fisher, through a series of reforms, tried to broaden the background of naval officers. “Surely”,he remarked, “we are drawing our Nelsons from too narrow a class.”⁵⁹ This was a direct attack on the aristocratic naval officers of the time. He also deleted from the Royal Navy rolls all old, obsolete gunboats and cruisers, maintained for the sake of showing the flag. The ships- “too weak to fight and too slow to run away” were a constant bother to Fisher, who felt that they were a serious drain on manpower and resources⁶⁰. Fisher stressed instant readiness for war, and the navy of the time was set for peace. Not only did they keep ships that were inadequate for war scattered across the globe, but they did not have a reserve fleet worth the name. Fisher adopted a “nucleus crew” system, whereby 3/5 of the crew who would serve on the ship in event of war were on it, ready for action⁶¹. All that was needed was a round out of crew from ashore and the ship could sail for battle. This stress of readiness for combat, on a navy which hadn’t fought a serious war in almost a century, did annoy many other high ranking officials. After all, without those warships scattered around the world, how would the British keep the locals in line, or protect trade and provide disaster relief? True, they would be easily destroyed in war, but it should be “risked for the sake of he world-wide interest of the Empire.”⁶² Fisher rejected that policy and the crew thus saved were used to man Fisher’s new large ships and nucleus crews.

Admiral Rickover fought several traditions himself. The tradition of the Naval Academy was for its officers to be highly involved in athletics, and to study hard, but not after lights out. Rickover studied routinely after lights out, and didn’t take part in the sports events that others did⁶³. He also didn’t dance as much as the other midshipmen, pleading he had a “OAO” (One And Only, a girlfriend) back in his hometown⁶⁴. Even at the earliest stages of his career Rickover refused tradition.

One of the conventions that Rickover changed, though it was long after the Nautilus, was the naming of submarines. He foreshadowed this with his suggestions for the naming of the SSBN’s, after famous political figures (including Congressmen who had supported him in his struggles)⁶⁵. Soon after, with the Los Angeles submarines, he completed the break with tradition. Instead of fish, for which the Navy named the most recent 520 or so submarines, it would be cities and states⁶⁶. There was a simple reason for this, rewarding loyal supporters of the Navy. Or, as one of Rickover’s aides put it “Fish don’t vote.”⁶⁷ This bit of tradition that Rickover scorned he did so in pursuit of political ends, that is, more submarines. In order to achieve his goals of more nuclear powered submarines, Rickover was willing to sacrifice long and storied naval traditions. This also shows his single-mindedness. He was going to do anything to make his vision a reality.

Technology

At the heart of the visions Fisher and Rickover were both trying to realize was the matter of the technology. They were trying to integrate new technologies into their navies, and make them stronger. Fisher was a great predictor- he was always making comments about the future of sea power. At one point he wrote a paper that argued the submarine would make amphibious invasions impossible. His paper “Invasion and Submarines” paints a grim picture of troop transports being slaughtered by submarines. He ignored the fact that submarines of that era could hardly maneuver underwater⁶⁸.

Though the technology would advance, Ruddock Mackay, a biographer, argues that Fisher’s purchase of premature technology, the submarines he purchased during his first term as First Sea Lord, hurt the Navy in fighting World War I, by providing a lot of hulls which had tobe manned and maintained but were useless against the German Navy on the high seas⁶⁹. Another example of Fisher’s grasp of the future of technology, but not its current limitations, was in a plan he made for H.M.S. Unapproachable. In this design study that formed the basis for the battlecruiser, Fisher and William Gard, a naval architect, removed the signal hoists, believing that tactical communication could be handled by wireless alone⁷⁰. Not till the aftermath of World War One, and the radio telephones of the Allied navies, would tactical control of a fleet be possible purely by radio⁷¹. With the need for encryption and Morse transmission, wireless was a very slow method of tactical control.

These failures to understand the limits of technology, however, in no way detract from the success Fisher found in integrating existing, top of the line technology. For that was his gift. The only new idea on Dreadnought was the berthing of the officers in the bow and the sailors astern. The other things on the Dreadnought, such as turbine engines, all big gun armament, and others, had been done, or at least planned, before. However, Fisher was the first person to put them together into one ship.

The Royal Navy knew turbine power when in 1904 Fisher decided to build the Dreadnought. After the Turbinia had made a commotion darting through the Royal Navy on review in 1897, evading the gunboats sent to stop it, the Navy had purchased several turbine driven ships. Several passenger liners also had turbine engines when Fisher decided on turbines. The largest completed ship, the Virginian, was about two-thirds the size of the Dreadnought⁷². However, Cunard Lines had ordered the largest ships in existence, planned at almost twice the size of Dreadnought, the massive Lusitania and Mauretania, to be equipped with turbines⁷³. So even turbines of a larger size than on Dreadnought were not a new idea. Trials with the turbine equipped ships proved that at high speeds, the turbines were much more efficient than the reciprocating engines of the previous warships⁷⁴. However, the largest current turbine driven Royal Navy ship, indeed the only Royal Navy turbine equipped ship larger than a destroyer, H.M.S. Amethyst, had yet to go to sea when the Dreadnought was ordered. Amethyst had lost a blade in a basin trial that wrecked the turbine⁷⁵. Although the advantages of the turbine were clearly recognized by everyone, there was a question of whether the technology was premature. In fact, the USN’s first three all big gun battleships were built with reciprocating engines⁷⁶. Not until 1911 would the USN order an entire class of battleships with turbine engines⁷⁷. Amethyst’s accident and the caution of the USN both point out that while turbines were understood, no one had ever used them on a ship that big before, and that it was uncertain whether they would be more efficient than the previous generation of technology.

Both the Japanese and the Americans started on all big gun capital ships about 6 months before the British did⁷⁸. The Italian naval architect Vittorio Cuniberti wrote an article in the 1903 edition of Jane’s Fighting Ships arguing for all big gun warships⁷⁹. So this idea was also not new⁸⁰. However, Fisher was able, by force of will, to act where others couldn’t. The Japanese, as an economy measure, replaced the armament on Aki with more conventional fit of weaponry⁸¹. The Americans slowly built Michigan while Fisher worked⁸². Michigan was traditional except in its all big gun armament. Dreadnought had a rigid compartmentation system. She was the first ship to have unpierced bulkheads. The compartmentation system was tested secretly and successfully on a merchant ship⁸³. The Lord Nelson class battleship had a similar, though less rigid, armor and compartment system⁸⁴. Earlier, the Russians and French had experimented with this compartmentation system⁸⁵. Each individual part of Dreadnought therefore, with the exception of the location of officers berthing rooms, was not new in itself, but their combination together onto one ship made Dreadnought more battle capable than any other vessel then afloat.

Fisher never lost his interest in steam turbines. One of his last acts in his second term as First Sea Lord was to order the “K” class submarine, powered by turbine engines⁸⁶. The submarine was not a success due to many factors, but one of them was definitely engine problems. After the K-26, no more steam powered submarines were built until Nautilus ⁸⁷.

The design of the Nautilus also was not completely new. In fact, Rickover went to great lengths to make sure that the only new parts of the ship were in the engineering section. He convinced the Navy General Board to put torpedo tubes (and therefore warship status) back into Nautilus after the Ship Characteristics Board designated the ship a test platform⁸⁸. Had the ship been designated a test item, then all of the other branches could have experimented with her, and any failure might have slowed down Rickover’s project.

Also, Rickover was not the first man to conceive of a nuclear powered submarine. That distinction belongs to Dr. Ross Gunn, who worked at the Naval Research Laboratory. He wrote a paper advocating a nuclear powered submarine in 1939 and, along with Dr. Philip Abelson, tried to start a program for it in 1946, but the birth pains of the Atomic Energy Commission doomed that attempt⁸⁹. Dr. Alvin Weinberg suggested the use of pressurized water as coolant and moderator for that project, a suggestion that the NR would find and explore more fully⁹⁰. The first program in many ways laid the groundwork for Rickover’s project- not only did it identify pressurized water, it also suggested the need for concurrent development of reactor prototype and submarine to speed up the construction⁹¹. In spite of these earlier efforts, however, Rickover did face opposition at the beginning of his project. This opposition was of the opinion that nuclear technology was premature for driving ships, and that the navy should let civilians develop power reactors and then modify them for ship use⁹². However, with the support of, prominent scientists like Edward Teller and E.O. Lawrence, Rickover convinced those in authority that he could push through the program, and achieve a nuclear submarine quickly⁹³. His success at this was remarkable.

Using the earlier project as a guide, Rickover proceeded to do everything possible to insure the success of nuclear power plant. He demanded that the reactor shielding be up to civilian strengths⁹⁴, to make sure that no complaints about radioactivity would be possible. Rickover ran simultaneous projects exploring both sodium cooled and water cooled reactors⁹⁵. This was to insure that he had a backup in case something went wrong with one of them. He knew from studies at the David Taylor Model Basin that the ship would be most efficient with a single propeller⁹⁶. However, Nautilus had two screws⁹⁷. This provided redundancy in case of failure. At first, he opposed under ice operations by single screw submarines, because he was so worried over failure. Rickover convinced the planners to remove the under ice requirements from the George Washington class ballistic missile submarine because he only wanted twin screw, twin reactor submarines to operate under the ice, and adopting the twin reactor configuration from Triton was seemed too complicated for the hurried project⁹⁸. This serves to illuminate Rickover’s understanding of the possibility of the failure of technology- he wanted redundancy, even in something he had designed to work and trusted. This is in sharp contrast with Fisher, who rarely saw the limits of technology, while Rickover did.

Conclusion

Neither of these men were prophets- they were visionaries who were not the original creators of ideas. Instead they synthesized - turned many ideas into a single ship, one of which they could be proud.

John Fisher and Hyman Rickover were two men who introduced new technology to the fleet. They did so with great publicity and fanfare. That was their personalities, their inner essence that drove them forward, they brooked few who disagreed with them. Since people in this group represented much of the navy of that period, it is possible to see how they felt the need for external public support via the press and politicians. They found strong basis for support outside the navy, and used that support to achieve their visions of the future of naval technology.

Both men found it necessary to attack the customs and traditions of their own navy, because those customs and traditions interfered with their vision. The same willpower that caused them to be merciless in arguments with other naval officers caused them to be merciless to old, storied naval traditions.

Both men were visionaries, but not in the sense of inventors. Instead of creating new technology, they made idea’s into reality. Others had dreamed of all big gun warships and nuclear powered ships, but it took these two men to achieve that.

This is their legacy, they show us one method for introducing new technology into the fleet. The guide they provide us shows that technical skill is less important than vision and willpower. Those two attributes are the key to bringing a new technology through the layers of tradition and opponents and into a market.

Bibliography:

Bacon, Admiral Sir R.H.. The Life of Lord Fisher of Kilverstone. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1929.

Breyer, Siegfried. Battleships and Battlecruisers, 1905-1970. Trans. Alfred Kurti. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co. Inc., 1973.

Brown, David. Warrior to Dreadnought: Warship Development 1960-1905. London: Chatham Publishing, 1997.

Churchill, Winston. Great Contemporaries. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937.

Fisher, Admiral of the Fleet Lord. Memories. New York City: Hodder and Stoughton, 1919.

Friedman, Norman. US Submarines since 1945. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1994.

Friedman, Norman. US Submarines through 1945. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1995.

Gibbs, C. R. Vernon. Passenger Liners of the Western Ocean. New York City: Staples Press, 1952.

Griffiths, Denis. Steam at Sea: Two Centuries of Steam Powered Ships. London: Conway Maritime Press, 1997.

Hewlett, Richard, and Francis Duncan. Nuclear Navy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

Hough, Richard. Dreadnought. New York City: Macmillian Co., 1964.

Mackay, Ruddock. Fisher of Kilverstone. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1973.

Marder, Arthur. From Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: the Royal Navy in the Fisher Era. Vol. 1, The Road to War. New York City: Oxford University Press, 1961.

Polmar, Norman. Atomic Submarines. Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Co. Inc., 1963.

Polmar, Norman, and Thomas Allen. Rickover: Controversy and Genius. New York City: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1982.

Pratt, Fletcher. “The Telephone Remakes Naval Warfare.” In Signalling and Communicating at Sea, edited by Daniel Woods. New York: Arno Press, 1980.

Rockwell, Thomas III. The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1992.

Sumida, Jon. In Defense of Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology, and British Naval Policy, 1889-1914. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989.

Tyler, Patrick. Running Critical. Washington DC: Harper and Row Pub., 1986.

United Stated States Department of Navy. United States Naval Academy. Lucky Bag:1922. Annapolis, Maryland: n.p., 1922.

Weir, Gary. Forged in War: The Naval-Industrial Complex and American Submarine Construction, 1940-1961. Washington DC: Naval Historical Center, 1993.