https://www.ynetnews.com/jewish-world/article/sj64twltxg#google_vignette
Few officers in American history have shaped the U.S. Navy as profoundly as Adm. Hyman G. Rickover — a small, sharp-tongued engineer who transformed the fleet from diesel and steam into the atomic age. As the Navy celebrates its 250th anniversary, Rickover’s life reads like a uniquely American story: a poor Jewish immigrant who rose to build the most powerful undersea force on Earth.
Born Chaim Godalia Rykower in 1900 in the Polish town of Maków, then under Russian rule, Rickover’s early years were defined by hardship. His father was a tailor, his family among the millions of Jews targeted by pogroms. In 1905 they fled to the United States, settling in Chicago. There, the boy who would later command admirals delivered telegrams and worked odd jobs to help his family survive.
When he entered the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1918, he had already learned the habits that would define him: precision, thrift and an unrelenting sense of duty. He had little interest in social life, preferring books to banter. Classmates saw him as a quiet outsider, earnest to the point of discomfort. Yet Rickover excelled, graduating in 1922 and beginning what would become a 63-year career — the longest in U.S. military history.
From the deck plates to the drawing board
Rickover’s first years at sea were far from glorious. He served aboard the destroyer USS La Vallette and the battleship USS Nevada, often sidelined by illness. But it was in those early days that his fascination with engineering took hold. The Navy of the 1920s prized seamanship and hierarchy; Rickover prized systems and ideas.
Determined to study further, he earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University, one of the few naval officers at the time to hold an advanced scientific degree. He married Ruth Masters, and after returning to active duty, served on submarines S-9 and S-48. The boats were cramped, temperamental and prone to failure — ideal laboratories for a man obsessed with improvement. Rickover tinkered, redesigned and repaired. When equipment broke, he found ways to make it stronger.
His technical skill caught attention. By the outbreak of World War II, he was leading the Electrical Section of the Bureau of Ships, overseeing the design and construction of warships across the fleet. He was demanding and famously impatient, insisting that every cable and circuit meet his standards. The Navy, for all its traditions, had never seen anyone quite like him.
The atomic vision
When the war ended, the Navy faced a question of identity in a world newly divided by nuclear power. Rickover saw the answer before anyone else. In 1946, as the Atomic Energy Commission was established, he volunteered to join a research team at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to study atomic reactors. Most of his colleagues viewed the atom only as a weapon. Rickover saw it as an engine — the perfect power source for a submarine.
The idea seemed fantastical: a ship that could stay underwater indefinitely, limited only by its food supply. But Rickover had little patience for what others deemed impossible. He pressed, argued and maneuvered his way through bureaucratic walls, eventually persuading President Harry S. Truman that nuclear propulsion could redefine the Navy’s future.
Nine years later, his dream surfaced — literally — with the 1955 launch of the USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine. “Underway on nuclear power,” her commanding officer radioed, marking the start of a new era.
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