The Admiral & the Atom

The Navy is presently going through the most tremendous change it has ever undergone. It is passing from steam to nuclear power, from gunpowder to nuclear weapons, from guns to guided missiles, and in the air, from propeller-type planes to supersonic planes, all at the same time.

--Navy Secretary Charles Thomas

With a soft rustle, the curtains open on the revolution in U.S. sea power. Drawn wide by a briefing officer, they reveal the secret wall maps in the blue-and-gold Pentagon office of the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations. The clock strikes 8 bells--and the Navy's boss, a sea roll to his stride, a faint touch of salt-spray green on the broad gold stripes on his sleeve, barges through the door at 31 knots. This freighter-shaped (5 ft. 11 in., 200 Ibs.) admiral, his ties fast to the old Navy and all its traditions, is plunging ahead in a new and astonishing naval era at the same hell-for-weather clip described by a destroyer shipmate from the Solomons Slot: "It's always been the same. All boilers on the line, superheaters cut in. Arleigh Burke is on the way."

Admiral Arleigh Burke, 54, blue eyes for the moment behind horn-rimmed glasses, looks past the curtains: on his maps, pinpointing every major warship and command, are the symbols of his Navy's revolution.

There, steaming from Istanbul to Athens in the Mediterranean, is Vice Admiral Harry D. Felt's Sixth Fleet--soon to include the bristling guided-missile cruiser Canberra*--offering defense-in-depth to NATO's long, thin southern flank and imposing its stable strength on Middle Eastern foment. There, riding at anchor in the soft swell of Okinawa's Buckner Bay, is Vice Admiral Stuart Ingersoll's Seventh Fleet, ready to turn its carrier-keyed task force toward the first break in Asia's ominous calm (a calm that might well not exist were it not for the Seventh Fleet's presence). There, in drydock for routine overhaul at Norfolk's huge (35 admirals on duty) Navy complex, is the 60,000-ton carrier Forrestal, most powerful ship afloat, preparing to join the fleet in the fall as the Navy's champion of nuclear striking power. She is designed to land and launch bombers, e.g., the Douglas A-3-D, which can carry city-razing payloads at more than 600 m.p.h.

And from New London, Conn., on a cruise to New York, slips the symbol of them all: the nuclear submarine Nautilus, its atomic engines still generating untold power after a year--and upwards of 30,000 miles--without refueling.

A Start in "Siberia." In terms of the new, atomic-age thinking, the Navy's revolution reached its most dramatic stage with Nautilus. After World War II and a brilliant and imaginative performance on the sea and in the air, the Navy turned slowly to the military potential of the atom. While the Air Force and its Strategic Air Command took over an urgent proprietorship in the atomic age, the Navy fought stoutly to preserve its great fleet, to keep a maximum of ships at sea. It fought the Air Force concept of long-range nuclear retaliation as immoral and stupid--and came perilously close to foreclosing its own future as anything but a sub-hunting ferry command.

SAC kept the world from unlimited war, but by reason of its own massive power--and a political decision by President Truman--it could answer Korea's limited challenge only in the old way (by conventional bombs). Nor did the Navy have all the answers, even though peninsular warfare is traditionally the Navy's meat. Item: at this critical moment, the Navy had no aircraft to meet the Russian MIG, had to make the humiliating decision to stay out of MIG Alley. (While the Air Force F-86s knocked MIGs out at a rate of 13 to 1.) Obviously, what was needed was a force to fight any kind of war, big, medium-sized or little.

But already the challenges of the new age were being met. In late 1950, in a storage shack nicknamed "Siberia" in a shipyard in Groton, Conn., Nautilus began to take shape under the intense, sometimes ruthless direction of Captain Hyman Rickover. Some of the salt-encrusted admirals had sneered at Rickover's folly and his obstreperous methods, obstructed him for five long and crucial years, tried to break up his team and even to get him tossed out of the Navy. It remained for Arleigh Burke, Chief of Naval Operations since last August, to realize fully what Nautilus meant, to pick up where the engineers had left off and, as a professional Navy man, to turn the professional Navy once and for all toward the future.

The All-Nuclear Fleet. At his Pentagon desk, Burke smacks the dottle from his pipe against his heavy Annapolis ring, looks far beyond today's Navy and sees Nautilus as the forerunner of the all nuclear fleet. Burke's Navy no longer makes conventional submarines: the atomic Sea Wolf is ready for commission, seven more A-subs are under construction or authorized, another six are scheduled in the budget now before Congress. That budget makes a pair of historic requests: one is for a construction start on the first nuclear-powered surface vessel, a missile cruiser of about 11,000 tons; the other is for funds to begin design and procurement on the nuclear power plant for an aircraft carrier. Best estimate of the time required for the Navy's complete nuclear conversion: 20 years.

Moving in as weaponry for the new Navy is a growing family of guided missiles: Terrier, Talos and Tartar, Regulus, Petrel, Sparrow and Sidewinder. With a big stock of conventional big-gun ammunition on hand, the Navy is making no more (except for target rounds). The missile cruisers Boston and Canberra are in service with their radar-controlled antiaircraft Terriers. The ancient battleship Mississippi, converted three years ago to a missile carrier, is a busy floating laboratory for missile development. Two conventional submarines. Tunny and Barbero, have been converted to missiles, and two more conversions are authorized. The Navy is asking funds for five more cruiser conversions, along with four new missile-launching frigates and eight destroyers. Arleigh Burke sees in the missile a chance that the battleship (the Navy has three afloat, 12 in mothballs) may be brought from semiretirement: it might, he thinks, be just the big, steady sea platform needed for launching the intermediate-range (1,500 miles) ballistic missile, Jupiter, on which the Navy and Army are now working together.

The Teardrop Navy. With nuclear power and the missile, the Navy of tomorrow dramatically begins to take shape. Its atomic-fueled task forces will be able to operate for months, perhaps years, without refueling; about 70% of its cumbersome, vulnerable train of oilers can thus be eliminated. Its carriers will still need huge aviation stores, which can be shuttled between stockpile and task force by high-speed nuclear supply ships (the Navy is nearing a breakthrough in high-energy chemical fuels that may give twice the range of conventional aviation fuels). Ships will be teardropped: stacks, made obsolete by nuclear engines, will be gone; forecastles will be rounded off; missile turrets may be mounted on elevators, kept below deck while cruising and run topside only for firing.

For years to come (although some of Burke's visionaries see a time when the entire nuclear, missile-armed Navy will move underwater) the admirals plan that the heart of the task force will remain the attack carrier with its steam catapults, mirror landing system, angled flight deck, and mobile strike power. Forrestal and Saratoga will be joined by Ranger, Independence and a still-nameless carrier, all now under construction.

Since it will not have to worry about fuel conservation, the nuclear task force will be able to sustain a speed of better than 30 knots over long ranges. With one-tenth as many ships as World War II's massed armadas, it will have infinitely more firepower. Forged into a unit by its communications system and far-ranging missilry, it could disperse itself over an ocean area the size of Indiana, so that even if its shield were pierced, not more than one of its ships could be knocked out by any one existing weapon. As the admirals see it, that task force could appear on a given afternoon off any enemy coast, rain atomic--or thermonuclear--destruction, disperse rapidly, pop up the next afternoon to strike 600 miles away. With its extreme mobility on its ocean-wide base, the Navy could, at last, fight any kind of war.

Because of its new-found sense of direction, because it is strong and growing stronger, the Navy no longer needs to indulge in defensive sniping at the Air Force and Army. In its cockier moments it can still rile the Air Force, as Navy Secretary Thomas did when he told a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee: "With its newest planes, now being introduced into the fleet, there will be few important targets in the world that the Navy, if called upon, could not reach with atomic weapons." Replied Air Chief General Nathan Twining last week: "We must be realistic about such factors as the probable [offshore] location of the carriers, as well as the amount of striking power they could contribute, which is small." But Nate Twining generally has gone down the line for the Navy's budget requests. Of the Army, Burke is the first to admit: "The final payoff is still to the man on the ground. He's going to have to occupy the territory."

Sailor's Sailor. The fact that Arleigh Albert ("31-Knot") Burke is at the helm of the new Navy is no accident of seniority. Last year able, Navy-wise Secretary Thomas began looking for a replacement for retiring Admiral Robert Carney as Chief of Naval Operations. Thomas was keenly aware of the nuclear revolution and deeply concerned about the Navy's failure to grasp its full significance. Thomas wanted a man with the vision and drive required by the atom. He wanted someone who understood naval aviation. But most of all he wanted a man that the Navy would be glad to follow into its tomorrow. This had to be one of the old Navy's own, a sailor's sailor who had fought the professional Navy's battles on the open sea and in the Pentagon narrows.

Thomas studied his lists and found his man. But he had to be certain. Almost casually, he canvassed the fleet, asked the admirals to name the five men whom they considered the best in their ranks. One name appeared on every list: Arleigh Burke, and with President Eisenhower's enthusiastic approval, Rear Admiral Burke was brought up past 92 seniors and made CNO. Despite his relative youth. Burke had all the qualifications.

About To Be Bilged. The Navy's Burke was born a farm boy near Boulder, Colo., with Baseline Lake (now part of the city's reservoir system) the nearest body of water. His father, Oscar Burke,* was a Swede, and his mother. Claire Mokler Burke, was Pennsylvania Dutch. As the eldest of six children, Arleigh worked hard on his father's 170-acre farm. But a country school teacher aroused his interest in the Navy and on June 26, 1919, the sturdy blond Swede from Boulder stepped off the old Washington, Baltimore & Annapolis railway (now defunct, but known for years to midshipmen as the "Weary, Belated & Annoyed") to begin his Navy career.

Annapolis was tougher for Burke than for most. "I didn't have enough background," he explains. "I nearly bilged out the first year. I had to work like hell, and I got in the habit of it." The habit has never been broken: Burke works from 12 to 14 hours for at least six, and often seven, days a week, has had only one 30-day leave since he left Annapolis 33 years ago.

Port to Port. On the day he graduated, Ensign Burke walked under crossed swords, amid all the pomp and circumstances of an Annapolis wedding, with pretty Roberta ("Bobbie") Gorsuch of Washington at his side. He had met her as a blind date, gone with her for three years, wearied his classmates with a favorite remark: "Lord, but that girl of mine is a wonder."

A wonder she had to be, for the life of a young Navy couple was not easy. In the wake of the Washington disarmament conference, the Navy was cutting its size and promotions were slow. Arleigh was assigned to the battleship Arizona, and Bobbie Burke spent the next five years scurrying from port to port on the West Coast. "As soon as I saw where the ship was docked," she says, "I started walking. Then I would rent the first acceptable place we could afford. Arleigh always liked to live near the ship."

By June 1939, Lieut. Commander Burke at last had a ship of his own, was piped aboard the U.S.S. Mugford as its skipper. Mugford was a destroyer, and thus began his second real romance. In the Solomons five years later, he was to handle destroyers with a deadly dash and affectionate skill that won him Navy renown as the most famous destroyer man in history.

Belay That Yo-Yo. The Navy was still trying to protect the Marines on Guadalcanal and gain control of the South Pacific when Burke was assigned to command Destroyer Squadron 23, which operated with Rear Admiral "Tip" Merrill's cruiser Task Force 39. Typically, Burke first set about building morale, christening DesRon 23 the "Little Beavers" after a comic-strip character, and making a deal with Merrill's well-stocked cruisers for tons of ice cream. He ran a taut ship with an easy hand. One of the few public reprimands he ever handed out was when one of his destroyers strayed out of formation. Over his TBS (Talk Between Ships) radio, Burke snapped to the offending skipper: "Mister, that's a destroyer, not a yo-yo."

Burke and his skippers loved nothing better than to bring their tin cans swooping into Blackett Strait, heeling them hard and sending giant waves to wash away Army and Marine latrines standing stilt-deep at water's edge (they tumbled best when top-heavy with occupants). For each such kill, a palm-thatched hut was painted on a destroyer bridge. This sport continued until an admiral, beseiged with Army complaints, collared Burke and roared: "Burke, if you or your men smash any more of these goddam privies, I'll see that you are put to sea in one yourself when this war is over."

Classic Action. In late November 1943, Burke's Little Beavers were refueling in Hathorn Sound when the call came to proceed "at 30 knots" (top speed) and intercept a Japanese force heading for Buka Island, off Bougainville's northern tip and 239 nautical miles away. Burke reported: "Proceeding at 31 knots." An hour later Admiral Halsey received Burke's latest position, along with word that the Little Beavers were still "making 31 knots." The next dispatch Burke received from Halsey was addressed to "31-Knot Burke." Burke had won his name.

Burke's speed placed him athwart the Buka-Rabaul neck of the Solomon Sea nearly two hours ahead of schedule--but none too soon to intercept the two Japanese destroyers, themselves far ahead of intelligence estimates, that soon bore into range. Burke launched his attack with a memorable order: "Hold your hats, boys; here we go." His destroyers headed for the enemy at flank speed, launched their torpedoes, turned hard to starboard. Both Japanese ships exploded, and Burke wheeled to face three more enemy destroyers just arriving. The newcomers saw what had happened and decided to depart --hastily. They were not fast enough; Burke fell on the rear enemy destroyer and sent it under with gunfire.

The president of the U.S. Naval War College later called this "an almost perfect surface action." Bull Halsey himself described it as "the classic sea action of this war." And for Burke was reserved perhaps the finest moment that can come to a blue-water sailor. When his Little Beavers steamed into their home base, every ship in the roadstead turned up its searchlights, and the bluejackets manned the rails to cheer Arleigh Burke and his gallant cans.

Fateful Assignment. The war moved into the Central Pacific; the Marshalls were invaded, Truk was bombed, the Marianas scouted, and Admiral Marc Mitscher made a lasting name for himself as the commander of a great new carrier task force. In Washington, Admiral Ernie King, the Navy's able, chill-eyed CNO, abruptly ordered that every aviation task force commander should have a nonaviator as chief of staff. Burke was assigned to Mitscher. At first neither Mitscher, the airman, nor Burke of the black-shoe Navy, liked the arrangement, but it was a fateful assignment. Burke was a long time changing Airman Mitscher's prejudice against surface sailors but he did it by demonstrating his consummate understanding of ships' capabilities.

Under Mitscher, Burke helped plan such U.S. victories as the Marianas Turkey Shoot and the Battles of the Philippine Sea. Moreover, he studied the employment of naval air power with the same tireless energy that had pulled him through his plebe year at the academy. Near war's end he played a key role in the death of Japan's mightiest battleship, Yamato. When word came that Yamato was bearing down on Okinawa, Burke hastily drew up a battle plan, Mitscher approved it and launched his planes. A British observer protested: "You are launching before you can possibly be sure of location." Replied Burke: "We are launching against the spot where we would be if we were Yamato." Yamato did not live to see the sun go down that day.

Secret Mastermind. No sooner had the war ended than the Navy was up to its scuppers in trouble. It fought against a plan to merge it and the Army under a single commander, managed to retain considerable autonomy under the "unification'' compromise that created the Defense Department. Then, in 1949, Harry Truman's Defense Secretary Louis Johnson, by direction a drastic budget cutter, abruptly canceled construction of the Navy's super carrier United States. The Navy decided that Johnson's act was a plain threat to naval aviation and, indeed, to the Navy as an effective combat command. There seemed only one thing to do: fight.

Arleigh Burke, established as a man who had thought as well as fought, was placed in charge of Op-23, the secret unit that would mastermind the Navy's fight. Captain Burke's actual orders were to prepare high-level, high-caliber position papers. In practice, Op-23 also furnished ammunition against the Air Force and its B-36. And to the Navy press section from Op-23 came material for the spate of scurrilous leaks that reached its climax with the Revolt of the Admirals (TIME. Oct. 17, 1949 et seq.).

Navy Secretary Francis ("Rowboat") Matthews was furious when he learned about Burke's Op-23. He ordered Navy inspectors to raid Burke's offices. They descended late one afternoon and held Burke and his staff incommunicado all night while they searched through the files for secret papers (they found none). A few weeks later, Matthews drew a red line through Burke's name on a list of promotions to rear admiral; it was back on the next list after a press outcry and the personal intervention of Admiral Forrest Sherman, the new Chief of Naval Operations, with President Truman.

The Bad & the Good. Whatever its demerits, Op-23 did give Burke an unequaled opportunity to study his Navy and decide where it should head, once past its crisis. When he took command as CNO. it was far from where he thought it should be. Against a growing Russian submarine threat--an estimated 400 subs, about 150 of them modern, long-range boats--the Navy was, and is, behind in its antisubmarine development. Although beautiful, new supersonic jet aircraft were on the drawing boards and at test centers, the Navy's jet design lagged behind the Air Force, and behind the more realistic threats of Russian aircraft. The Bureau of Ships had not kept pace: for its carriers, the Navy was forced to take over British inventions--the steam catapult, the angled deck, the mirror landing system.

Equally pressing was the need to hold skilled technicians in the Navy, and here, progress has its own price. Explains an enlisted missileman at Norfolk: "This new equipment is getting so complicated that the makers find a junction area and slap a little black box over it. No one but the civilian technical representative can monkey with this little black box. The Navy man loses contact with his equipment. He begins to think about getting out so he can become a tech rep and work with the little black box himself."

Arleigh Burke knows only one way to meet such problems: proceed at 31 knots, all day and, if necessary, every day.

Hawks Through Peepholes. One day last week, Burke warmly greeted a visitor to his office. He sat behind his small desk, puffed on his battered pipe, and, while Filipino stewards served coffee, talked easily. The gentle, almost ingenuous, fagade was deceptive: watching like hawks from behind one-way peepholes at each end of the office were Burke's aides. They knew that they would soon be struck by a blizzard of memos, ideas and questions, all growing out of Burke's seemingly casual conversation. It is the same with every conversation Burke has.

Since becoming CNO, Burke has held regular stag dinners for young Navy lieutenants in his Observatory Hill quarters off Washington's Massachusetts Avenue. After dinner Burke lights up and asks the lieutenants to talk. They do--and next morning the memos flow to Burke's aides.

The old Navy hands whom Burke sometimes takes with him on flying inspection tours come in for a shock treatment. Explains an aide: "There they are, all these admirals and captains, looking comfortably out at the clouds. Then, ten minutes after we're airborne, Burke comes down the aisle. To the first admiral he says, 'Would you mind giving me a study paper on rank structure? Take your time. Two or three hours will be soon enough.' Then, with the admiral staring after him flabbergasted, Burke moves on to the next man --and so he goes down through the plane. Some of these people haven't thought about writing a paper in years, and suddenly they've got to produce. I remember one guy who didn't finish his paper--hell, he didn't even get started. When we got back to the Pentagon, he asked Burke if he still wanted it. Burke said, 'Sorry, it's too late. I've made my decision.' He had also made his decision about that officer."

"Very Resptv." In his eagerness to bring new life to the Navy, Burke sets a man-killing personal example. In his office by 8 o'clock, he gets his briefing, then attacks the dispatches piled high on his desk. He makes marginal notations with a green pencil (no one else in the office is permitted to use green), begins each comment with "Pls." and ends with "Resptv." In their replies, Burke's staffers sign off with "Very Resptv."

Conferences, as many as 20 a day, keep Burke in his office until 8 or 9 most nights, and he takes his packed briefcase home with him. At dinner, he passes up bread, butter and potatoes in his continuing war against weight, but finishes off with a generous helping of ice cream. Says Bobbie Burke: "He doesn't seem to mind getting fat on ice cream."

Burke rarely shows temper. When he does, it may require Bobbie's calm hand to cool him off. Once Burke was accosted at a cocktail party by a tipsy captain who ripped into one of his pet projects. Burke went home raging, slept fitfully that night, arrived at his office the next morning still boiling. He ordered his yeoman to get the captain on the phone. While the yeoman was placing the call. Burke reached into his pocket for his pipe. Along with the pipe came a note in Bobbie's neat handwriting. It read: "You're in no mood to make a sound decision." Said Burke to the yeoman: "Please cancel that call."

Mind Over Matter. Late last month, Burke took off on a Far Eastern inspection tour that reflected the sweep of U.S. Navy interest. From a Pearl Harbor visit with tall, laconic Pacific Commander Felix Stump, Burke jumped to Guam, Kwajalein, the Navy's Subic Bay base in the Philippines, thence to Indonesia's Djakarta, neutralist Cambodia, temple-studded Bangkok, and finally to Saigon.

In Bangkok, a state dinner had been held for Burke. Dressing for the dinner, Burke turned to the young officers who had accompanied him. "All right, men," he said. "We are about to meet the head of state of a foreign power, a man that might challenge you on any subject. Put yourself in my place. You are a senior representative of the U.S. Government. What would you do?" The officers looked blank. Snapped Burke: "Think. Just think. And don't stop thinking." The U.S. Navy still has a long way to go in its revolution, but under Arleigh Burke's driving insistent leadership, it is thinking as never before. For years Navy theory dragged in the wake of advancing technology. Now, at last, ideas far outstream hard-ware-in-hand, and the Navy knows where it is heading.

*An exception to the rule that all U.S. cruisers are named after American cities, because the gallant Australian cruiser Canberra met its end along with three U.S. cruisers in the Battle of Savo Island on Aug. 9, 1942.

*The old family name was Bjorkegren, the first syllable of which is pronounced Burke. Its Swedish meaning is "limb of a birch tree," and it traces to Burke's great-grandfather, who worked for the Swedish Ministry of Forestry.

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