Word: raborn
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...roiling water, a grinning redhead, wearing the two stars of a rear admiral, thrust his way through the crowded companionway of the Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarine George Washington and clapped her skipper, Commander James Osborn, on the back. Then, just to prove it was all routine, Rear Admiral William Raborn Jr., boss of the Navy's Polaris project, gave orders to get ready for a second shot before a proud succinct message was sent to President Eisenhower in Newport: "Polaris, from out of the deep to target. Perfect." In a second message to Admiral Arleigh Burke, chief of naval...
...stretch of Indian Ocean where the U.S. now has no bases. They will be at home along the long Arctic coastline of Eurasia. By 1965, the Navy plans a fleet of 45 FBM submarines-30 on station at a time around the Eurasian land mass. And by 1965 Red Raborn plans to extend Polaris' range to 2,500 miles per missile...
...Navy did not hesitate, nor did it follow the example of other services and call in civilian industry to run its program. Chief of Naval Operations Burke issued orders to Rear Admiral William Francis Raborn Jr., 55, a bluff, barrel-chested navigator who had never seen the sea before he got to Annapolis with the class of 1928. Burke gave Raborn orders to proceed with "all possible haste" to develop a fleet ballistic missile. He was authorized to set up a task force called, simply, Special Projects, which would cut across all the Navy's cherished bureaus. His work...
Along with his orders, Red Raborn got a letter, a blunt, forceful document which was a rarity in the annals of the Navy, signed by the CNO himself. "If Rear Admiral Raborn runs into any difficulty with which I can help," wrote Admiral Burke, "I will want to know about it at once, along with his recommended course of action ... If more money is needed, we will get it. If he needs more people, those people will be ordered in. If there is anything that slows this project up beyond the capacity of the Navy and the department, we will...
Ready to Die. With his flushed, seadog face, his poop-deck voice, his blunt, peppery language, Red Raborn scarcely seemed the type to tackle a job that called for a trained scientist. More important, Raborn was a driving organizer, a demon for efficiency and an able politician. He had done time in almost every branch of his service-aviation, destroyers, gunnery schools-and everywhere he was known as a man with a single-minded urge to get things done. At Pearl Harbor in 1941, his patrol squadron was one of the few loaded with bombs and ready to fight back...