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Mr. Luddite[_4_]

On 3/17/2018 2:58 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 17 Mar 2018 13:56:20 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

The Navy tried to get rid of him by passing him over
for promotion three times. (He was a Captain at the time). He bypassed
the Navy, went to Congress and got his promotion to Rear Admiral.

===

That must have endeared him with the rest of his naval colleagues. :-)

Oh, they hated him. He didn't play by the rules.

The Navy was nervous after WWII because the only way to deliver a nuke
then was via bomb from an airplane. They were concerned that the Air
Force would become the dominate branch of the military, making the Navy
obsolete. So the Navy brass wanted nuke power and a means of delivering
a nuke fast and Rickover wouldn't sacrifice safety for speed of delivery.

The first Navy subs with nuclear tipped warheads had a system called
"Regulus". They weren't vertically launched missiles like "Polaris"
that came later. They were actually turbofan powered cruise missiles
that were derived from the German V1 "buzz bomb" weapons used in WWII.
The Regulus was launched on a short rail system from the deck of the
sub assisted by two JATO rockets. Sub had to surface to fire them.

I had never heard of this system before. It stayed in service until
1964 when the Polaris missile came along. The subs that were originally
designed for Regulus were converted to carry the vertically fired
Polaris rocket.