USS Triton

When the US Navy started building Atomic powered submarines, the first one, the Nautilus, had Westinghouse machinery in the engine room, and was built at the Electric Boat Works in Groton, Conn.

The second sub was the USS Seawolf, also built at Electric Boat, had GE machinery in the engine room. I was sent to Groton, Conn. to help install the turbo-generators.

I had worked on many ships but this was my first time working on a submarine. To work on a submarine you cannot suffer from claustrophobia. On this sub the turbo-generators were installed with the center line of the turbine and gear box below the level of the of the upper level floor gratings, that meant to get at the bolts of the gear casing one had to lift up a hinged section of the floor grating, climb down into four foot crawl space and work on your knees. To get to the other side you had to climb up out of that space and go around to the other side to lift up another grating and get down on your knees on that side. It was not fun.

The next sub with GE machinery was the Triton. This was the largest sub built up to that time.
It had two separate power plants, with a forward reactor room and engine room, and an after reactor and engine room. And two line shafts and propellers. As far as I know the only twin screw atomic sub. On this one the turbo-generators were up where you could work on them.

After the machinery was installed I was transferred from the Boston Office to Gear Engineering in Lynn, Mass. When it came time for the Triton sea trials, Adm. Rickover wanted the chairman of GE to ride the sub. He declined, and the duty was passed down through each level of management until it reached the low man on the totem pole, me. So I rode it for my first time at sea on a submarine. Of course it was the first time the sub had been to sea, and under the sea.
We ran the surface trials, and then submerged. The first order of business is to look for leaks. and then fix them. After these were fixed we submerged to test depth, which is below operating depth. And again looked for leaks. Again fixing those found.

So the under water sea trial began, this was a duplicate of the surface trials, four hours ahead at full power. But Adm Rickover wanted more then full power, so the reactors were over loaded, and rags stuffed in the reactor alarms to cut down the noise level, and the main propulsion turbines run up to overload condition. So this was the way the four full power ahead was run. At the end of the full power run, the test agenda called for a crash stop and a thirty minute full astern power run. The crash stop was accomplished, and the half hour full power astern run was started. As we picked up astern speed we started to dive down, then up, then down again, up again, then down again, and we just kept going down at about a thirty degree down angle. Adm Rickover told the throttle man "FULL SPEED AHEAD!" To which he eagerly responded "Aye, Aye, Sir" and they spun the astern valves closed, and the ahead valves open, and we started to go forward up out of what we found out later was past test depth in the bow. Adm. Rickover immediately headed for the bridge to have a heated lecture for the Captain.

So this was my first time under water on a sub.