Navy Lt. Jimmy Carter had applied to join the fledgling nuclear submarine program.

For two hours his interviewer, Capt. Hyman Rickover, let the young officer discuss any subject.

Though he chose familiar topics — current events, naval tactics, electronics — Rickover's exacting questions quickly revealed how little Carter knew about all of them.

The future president later recalled being "saturated with cold sweat." But finally, he had a chance to shine when asked how he had done at the Naval Academy. "I stood 59th in a class of 820," Carter replied, his chest swelling with pride.

Instead of offering congratulations, Rickover asked: "Did you do your best?" Carter replied he had not always done so.

"Why not?" Rickover asked. Carter just sat there, then got up and slowly left the room.

Rickover would conduct thousands of such interviews over his decades directing the Navy's nuclear propulsion program. He was determined to personally take the measure of the people who would work for him and find out how they would react under stress.

"Organizations don't really accomplish anything," he said. "Theories of management don't much matter. Endeavors succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best possible people will you accomplish great things."

Made It Happen

In 1946, Rickover perceived a compelling need for a nuclear-powered submarine. But no nuclear projects in the country were geared to power generation, and the Navy had no intention of leading the way.

Yet in less than a decade, Rickover had bent the Navy and the federal government to his will, put together and trained a team, solved the engineering problems and made it a reality. Among his many honors, he was awarded the Legion of Merit in 1952 for what Navy Secretary Dan Kimball called "the most important piece of development work in the history of the Navy."

Because the Navy's pioneering nuclear power program achieved such success under Rickover's leadership, he was asked to head up construction of the reactor for the nation's first commercial nuclear power plant. The facility at Shippingport, Pa., went on line in 1957.

Rickover understood the value of hard work from a young age.

Born in 1900 in the Polish city of Makow, then under Russian occupation, he emigrated to the U.S. when he was 6. The family settled in Chicago, where his father worked six long days a week as a tailor. In high school during World War I, Rickover served as a Western Union messenger boy, working weekends as well as a 3 p.m.-to-midnight shift on weekdays. He sometimes delivered telegrams to Rep. Adolph Sabath, who would eventually nominate him for a slot at the Naval Academy.

"To make a difference in the real world is to put 10 times as much into everything as anyone else thinks is reasonable," Rickover said.

After graduating from Annapolis in 1922, Rickover spent five years at sea before earning a master's of science in electrical engineering from Columbia University. He then served as an engineer officer for three years aboard submarines. All of this experience would pay off when Rickover was sent to Washington to oversee the electrical section of the Navy's Bureau of Ships.

When Rickover saw a problem, he tackled it. When he saw an opportunity, he seized it.

Scanning commercial catalogs for electrical equipment the Navy purchased, Rickover wondered why the manufacturers had to make the hardware "so big, so heavy and so unreliable under shipboard conditions," wrote Theodore Rockwell in "The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference."

Starting with a particularly bulky control panel, Rickover instructed his team to redesign it from scratch. He called up the president of the manufacturer to say the Navy would be sending over new design specifications within the month. Rickover demanded to know whether the company would build it according to the new specs."The president, completely taken aback by such uncharacteristic behavior on the part of a government customer, hastily agreed," Rockwell wrote.

Rickover basically took the same approach in developing a nuclear-powered sub after World War II.

"He assigned himself the task of building an atomic submarine," Rockwell wrote. "This is the story of a man who changed the world. And he did it as a low-level government bureaucrat, with little power and authority other than what he had created himself."

It wasn't until later that Rickover was promoted to admiral — over the objection of some Navy brass he had rubbed the wrong way.

The Navy's submarine fleet in World War II had great success in destroying enemy ships, but it came at a high price: 52 submarines and more than 3,500 men lost.

These submarines were powered by diesel fuel on the surface, but had to rely on battery power when they submerged because of the fumes. They couldn't travel much faster than 10 knots, or 12 mph, for over an hour underwater, or the battery would run out and they'd have to surface, possibly coming under fire.

Nuclear propulsion gave submarines the upper hand. On her first cruise in 1955, the USS Nautilus averaged 16 knots, or 18 mph, on a 1,381-mile trip from New London, Conn., to San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was the longest a submarine traveled underwater — by a factor of 10.

In an obituary after Rickover's death in 1986, the Washington Post wrote that every president since John F. Kennedy "has wagered the security of the United States on the reliability of Rickover's nuclear-powered submarines and the missiles they carry."

"These invulnerable warheads in the depths form the backbone of 'deterrence' — the presumption that the Soviet Union will not attack the United States because of the retaliatory strike that would come from under the sea," the Post wrote.

Rickover took the most direct path to reach his goal.

"One reason that Rickover was able to produce was because he always took a practical, results-oriented approach to technical development," wrote William Beaver in Business Forum. "He wanted his projects to be guided by engineers, not scientists who, he believed, tended to get bogged down in details and experimentation."

He demanded excellence and total dedication from his team.

"He set a standard of commitment and perfection in life that I had never experienced before," said Carter, who came aboard despite his rocky interview. "He really had a great impact on my life."

Up Close

Rickover paid the closest attention to detail.

"I probably spend about 99% of my time on what others may call petty details," Rickover said. "Most managers would rather focus on lofty policy matters. But when the details are ignored, the project fails."

In one incident recounted by Rockwell, all of the technical experts argued that gigantic bolts would be enough to secure the lid of the reactor pressure vessel — the steel-walled vessel that held the reactor core. Rickover thought the lid should also be welded shut.

"Suppose your son were to serve on this submarine," he told his assembled team. Suddenly, everyone thought the weld was a good idea.

When he died, Navy Secretary John Lehman said the 150 nuclear-powered ships Rickover put to sea had collectively steamed for the equivalent of 3,000 years without a nuclear accident.

"He has set the standard for the world in the peaceful and safe use of nuclear power," Lehman said.

BY JED GRAHAM