Prior to World War II, the established bureaucracy within the U.S. navy felt that battleships would decide victory or defeat in any ocean-based war. During the war, it was realized that it was not battleships which were the deciding factor, but the aircraft carriers and hence, a new bureaucracy displaced the old.  There was another weapon which created its own set of followers and that was the submarine.  It was the submarine in the Pacific that accomplished what the U-boats could not achieve in the Atlantic; the destruction of the Japanese to transport the basic materials they needed to conduct a war.  The U.S. submarine fleet destroyed the Japanese merchant fleet which carried the oil, wood, coal, foodstuffs and all the other ingredients upon which Japan depended.

The submarine officers were a different breed apart from the officers on carriers and other surface vessels.  They were so different in fact, that officers who served in submarines knew they did not have a chance to access the highest ranks in the navy.  They were considered mavericks, risk takers and prone to striking out on their own.  They readily admitted these characteristics but then their service was entirely different from the rest of the navy.  A surface vessel can have engine problems and get towed, but if a submarine has major engine problems, it sinks.

Against this backdrop of two entrenched bureaucracies, each attempting to snare more dollars in the military budget, comes Hyman Rickover, a man of Jewish background, born in Russian occupied Poland in 1900 who has chosen to make engineering as his course in the Navy.  Talk about handicapping! As with sub officers, an engineering officer realized that getting a shot at Admiral status was small.  Not only those black marks, but he also becomes the driving force behind creating a force of nuclear submarines while disdaining the sub captains who came out of WWII with honors and medals.  Yet somehow, despite all odds, he manages to defeat much of the naval bureaucracy, convince powerful Congressional leaders and several President’s to create a nuclear submarine force that although smaller than the Soviet fleet, was technologically far ahead of the Soviets.