I prefer this joke; "Two senior retired USAF generals at the old air farce folks retirement home are eating lunch. One asks the other; "So who won the cold war?" An old navy submariner next table over munching on his salad, pipes up; "We did, flyboys, under the arctic ice, and brother was it freezing!"
Grissom, White and Chaffee. I was a young boy and I was furious.
David Oliver remarks that the USN felt a collective keel up shock from Thresher and then Scorpion. Heads rolled in both cases. Those who survived the reviews had it burned into them that never again would we send our submariners to sea in deathtraps. It even spilled outward into the surface fleet.
I think that it is something of an organizational symptom. The USAF has a fairly carefree mentality, that was a constant problem to overcome when it came to specialized munitions. SAC thought it found a cure, then it was folded into Strategic Command and Air Combat Command and boy
am I nervous about that service, especially from some incidents reported about 15 to 8 years ago.
There is a special HAZARD in operating submerged machines in nature's best known solvent. Might also add that operating that machine deaf, and blind with echo-location gear you cannot use because other men are trying to KILL you even in a cold war, while you use a finicky gyro-based artificial 2-d horizon and directional compass linked to a so-so computer (Blind man's bluff is very real.) is actually more dangerous than getting into near earth orbit. The USS San Francisco ran into an undersea mountain, because a navigation party used an old chart and they did not pay close attention to their SUBSAFE training. Thank Murphy, the machine was built to heroic standards of reliability.
As to building atomic boats to old tried and proven methods... well let
RADM Oliver address that issue. Navy Sea Systems and the Portsmouth gang were killing US sailors with their carelessness.
I can. Casualties (the mechanical kind) are a naval fact of life.
It is done. One does not hear about it, but sometimes bump and scrape incidents (Refer to Oliver video and the sub tender incident.) result in US surface ships limping home banged and dented up with holes in them. Subs are worse.
1 chance in 150 war patrols guaranteed per class. Estimated 6 Novembers lost. We know of 1 Oscar, and maybe a Charlie. We know for certain that 2 Russian diesel boats also died.
But... British T-class boats were much worse. 1 chance in 100.
Likewise, given what we now know about their dangerous engineering practices.