Recommend: No<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This book has the illustrious honour of being the second book of my work book club. This doesn\u2019t mean I had to like it, but it means I had to read it. If you couldn\u2019t think of anything lamer than 8 engineers getting together and furiously debating the merits of systems engineering or if Kelly Johnson was magically teleported to 2024 would his program management style be effective. Then I\u2019ve got good news for you. You\u2019re not invited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dark Waters is a classic in the late-era style of Cold War military engineering biographies. Where the focus is on the machines and the men (some women, not many\u2026) who made them happen. This particular book focuses on a small nuclear submarine. The NR-1, or perhaps more accurately titled \u201cThe little submarine who could\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not particularly well written, but to be honest, I would have been surprised if it was. For books like this with two authors, it\u2019s always hard to tell how much the actual \u201cprotagonist\u201d wrote and how much was the co-author. I imagine it\u2019s mostly interviews which the co-author tries to embellish and create some semblance of an arc. It was good enough though. These books all have a tone and this one was pretty similar. A semi-narrative style focussed on several years of a program through the lens of a specific person. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Admiral Rickover is the real character of the story. A larger than life character who single minded doggedness created the modern nuclear navy. He floats around on the periphery of the story, but is always a delight to encounter. All the best anecdotes come from his antics. Unfortunately the bulk of the other characters are either exceedingly component engineers or serious career military men. But you\u2019re not reading this book for the nuanced character development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All the classic tropes were there:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The NR-1 submarine was an interesting focus though. I hadn\u2019t read much about submarines before and they introduce new technology issues, but in the familiar safety-critical mission-capable lens of aircraft (except somehow even more expensive). An example is that nuclear reactors really don\u2019t like going vertical. This makes sense, but they could have engineered around it and for whatever reason, the status quo is just don\u2019t let them go vertical. Additionally, the submarine had a little wheel on the bottom that let it drive around the seafloor and hold a fixed position. Tidbits like this are the parts I found most engaging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In general I did find myself yearning for more detail. Maybe this was as the author was an operator and not an engineer or maybe they didn\u2019t want to alienate whatever audience they had. I didn\u2019t feel like I had a good understanding of why certain trade-offs were made or the overall design and project management approach. How integrated were Sperry contractors in the design team? Were they designing to a fixed set of overarching design requirements (although it was the 60s, maybe I am giving them too much credit)? It was good to see that some engineering is timeless though. Like the insistence of using off-the-shelf parts for cost, but then freaking out when they don\u2019t meet all the environmental testing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As soon as the book seems to get going and the submarine is finally off on missions, the author quits the navy to go work for a contractor. It\u2019s unclear if there were some other missions that we don\u2019t hear about because of security, but it\u2019s a bit of an anti-climax. The back half of the book is all stories the author heard second-hand from old war-buddies. These are still generally interesting, but the credibility of them is reduced in this context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Overall, this book was interesting enough and pretty easy to read. It\u2019s worth a read if you\u2019re into this thing and haven\u2019t read about submarines in before in particular. But it doesn\u2019t quite have the magic of Ben Rich\u2019s Skunk Works. It has convinced me that I should never get in a submarine though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Mrs Rickover passed away last night. So unless you have something really important, please don’t call the admiral until after lunch.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":560,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews_books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":566,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions\/566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}