Joke aside most Nuke school grads are smart. My former neighbor and childhood friend was an instructor out in Idaho at the training facility in the early 1980's. It is the most academically demanding school in the armed forces. I knew very smart guys who didn't make it through and I knew a couple of them who could have cut it academically but had about as much common sense and good judgement as a village idiot. They got culled out of the program and ended up on conventional with a six year active obligation to boot.
My guess is once actually onboard Carter would have washed out in sea trials. There's a huge difference in knowing books and theory and being able to run a propulsion system nuke or conventional in the capacity of an engineering officer other than a junior officer in charge of auxiliaries. The Main Propulsion Assistant on my ship was a walking encyclopedia but he also knew the ship like the back of his hand and even knew valve locations for my gear which was the A/C chill water piping system. He was the closest human being I've seen to the Star Trek character Spock.
In an emergency he could rattle off orders one right after the other and they were accurate and correct. He also had the personality of a brick and could be quite abrupt in interacting with crew sometimes. Still he was the man you wanted sitting in DC Central when it hit the fan.
Thanks for the informative and colorful comments.
As bad as Carter was, he didn’t show his real stripes until after he left office. The guy didn’t really have a problem with vicious dictators as long as they were Marxists.
If they were allies of the U. S., very very bad. “Oh gotta fix that situation right now.”
That officer you mentioned seems like a good guy to have araound alright. Lucky you guys...
I guess you saw post 76, Rickover hand picked him.