Until the late 80’s nucs went to a conventional A school then on to NNPS and prototype. There were already a dozen nuc subs and a couple nuc cruisers, so the nuc pipeline was already established. Of course, a carrier requires hundreds of nucs, not just dozens, so they had to pump out a lot of trainees.
I trained at the mock up of the Enterprise engineroom in Idaho. It was up and running for years before the Enterprise became operational. Half of my class went to the Enterprise at the start of the 1990 overhaul. The other half went to the new construction George Washington. There were only two of us, out of about 200, that went to submarines. Ironically, I went to a boat in post shakedown availability, so the other sub guy was the only person in the entire class that did not end up in Newport News Shipyard.
63 years as an active duty Squid would take an unusual person that's for certain :>} I read up on Rickover some to refresh my memory. He was still active when I was in 76-80. I knew an Engineering Officer or two with about the same personality traits. But when it hit the fan they were the one you wanted sitting in Central because you could bet your life that their knowledge was right.
We had a MPA who could rattle off Auxiliary equipment valve numbers and locations off the top of his head. I mean this guy even knew exact physical locations as in reach over the top of valve number whatever. He even knew the chill water system piping and even when I left after 4 years I was still learning it.