Rickover, Hyman

Early Life and Military Career

Rickover was born on January 27, 1900, in an area of Poland controlled by the Russian Empire. His family immigrated to the United States in 1905 to escape the persecution of Jews in their native country. Rickover received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1918. Although he was capable of handling the school's academic demands, Rickover struggled at Annapolis, in part because he did not blend in socially with other classmates; the traditional midshipman demographic was Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, Rickover was from Eastern Europe and Jewish. His ethnic and religious heritage contributed to Rickover's being ostracized, but his contentious personality played a significant role in his difficulties as well. As a result, Rickover had a confrontational relationship with the Naval Academy and its alumni throughout his career. He insisted that many of its professional traditions were silly and detracted from the midshipmen's education while most alumni maintained that these practices were a vital part of their professional socialization. Both sides had difficulty recognizing how their own experiences had colored their interpretations of the Naval Academy.

Rickover completed conventional sea tours on destroyers and battleships during the early 1920s. In 1927, he was [Page 741]reassigned to the Naval Academy to begin graduate studies in electrical engineering; in 1929 he received his master's degree from Columbia University. (At the time, few officers completed graduate degrees; the ones who did were generally earmarked for careers in the Navy's technical bureaus. Graduate school was not important for promotions; most screening boards looked at an officer's performance during sea duty.) In the early 1930s, Rickover completed his first tours on board submarines. German submarines had played an important role in commerce raiding and blockade duty during World War I, but most navies in the 1930s were still wrestling with the strategic implications of this weapons platform. In 1933, Rickover translated the German submarine manual, Das Unterseeboot, into English; it became a basic instructional text for the American submarine community.

Rickover did not have the temperament for operational command. After he failed to be selected for submarine command, Rickover transferred to engineering duty, a technical specialty within the Navy that did not produce many flag officers. During World War II, Rickover excelled in his assignment as head of the Electrical Section in the Bureau of Ships. In this position, Rickover managed experts from both the Navy and civilian industry working on numerous technical issues affecting wartime operations.

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