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Contact Info
Home Town Mayfield, Kentucky
Last Address Judson Retirement Community, Cleveland, Ohio.
Kenneth Monroe Carr, USNA '49
Navy Vice Admiral
Chair Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Kenneth M. Carr, a retired Navy vice admiral and nuclear submariner who in retirement served five years on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the last two as chairman, died Nov. 15 at a retirement center in Cleveland. He was 90.
The cause was pneumonia and lung cancer, said a nephew, Richard Pace.
Adm. Carr retired in 1985 after a 43-year Navy career that began during World War II aboard an assault landing craft in the Pacific. In his final active-duty assignment, he was deputy and chief of staff to the commander-in-chief of the Atlantic fleet and the Atlantic Command.
He was appointed in 1986 to the NRC, the federal agency that regulates commercial nuclear power. As chairman, he said one of his primary missions would be to press the search for ways to overcome public opposition to nuclear power plants.
“I think it’s going to be a generational change before you get the public acceptance,” he told the Journal of Commerce in 1989.
Kenneth Monroe Carr was born in Mayfield, Ky., on March 17, 1925. He grew up there and in Arkansas and California, where his father was a railroad worker.
After sea duty in the Pacific during World War II, he was assigned to an officer candidate program at the University of Louisville before graduating in 1949 from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.
He then entered the submarine school in New London, Conn., and spent many years as a crew member on the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, Nautilus. He was an officer on the Nautilus when it crossed under the North Pole in 1958, seen at the time as an important achievement in the Cold War.
Among later assignments, he commanded the nuclear-powered submarine Flasher and the ballistic missile nuclear-powered submarine John Adams. From 1977 to 1980, he commanded the Submarine Force of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet.
His medals included the Defense and Navy distinguished service medals, the Legion of Merit and the Defense Superior Service Medal.
Adm. Carr was a former resident of Arlington, Va., and also had a home in Groton, Conn., near the Navy’s submarine school. He moved to Cleveland about five years ago.
Other Comments:
Kenneth Carr graduated high school in San Bernadion, California in 1941. After attending San Bernardino Valley College for two years, VAdm Carr enlisted in the Navy as a Seaman.
He was a crewman/coxswain on an assault landing craft attached to the USS President Jackson (APA-18) in late 1943, and participated in the landings at Bougainville, Solomon Islands, and the initial landing in February 1944 at Green Island, Bismarck Archipelago.
USS Nautilus: Vice Adm. Carr was first assigned as the Gunnery Officer, in charge of Torpedo Division, on Nautilus. As a young Lieutenant on the ship's crew, he was credited with coining the popular phase "The sun always shines on Nautilus," after the cloudy skies parted just before the submarine's launching in 1954. With the exception of twelve months spent at nuclear power training from June 1956 to May 1957, he served in a number of billets on the ship, including as the ship's engineer during her first overhaul. He transferred in December 1960. He had the distinction of being the only officer who was both a Nautilus plank owner (member of the commissioning crew) and a "PANAPO" (member of the 1958 Nautilus crew who traveled to the North Pole. He was on watch as the ship's conning officer when USS Nautilus made history on August 3rd 1958, as the first ship to voyage under the North Pole. The submarine proceeded to Portland, England where her crew received the Presidential Unit Citation, the first ever issued in peacetime.
NEC 112X-Unrestricted Line Officer - Submarine Warfare
Base, Station or City Not Specified
State/Country Not Specified
Patch
USS Scorpion (SSN-589) Details
Hull number SSN-589
USS Scorpion (SSN-589) was a Skipjack-class nuclearsubmarine of the United States Navy, and the sixth vessel of the U.S. Navy to carry that name. Scorpion was declared lost on 5 June 1968 with 99 crew members dying in the incident. The USSScorpion is one of two nuclear submarines the U.S. Navy has lost, the other being USS Thresher (SSN-593), which sank on 10 April 1963 off the coast of New England.
Scorpion's keel was laid down on 20 August 1958 by the Electric Boat Division of the General Dynamics Corporation in Groton, Connecticut. She was launched on 19 December 1959, sponsored by Mrs. Elizabeth S. Morrison (daughter of the last commander of the World War II-era USS Scorpion, which had been lost with all hands in 1944), and commissioned on 29 July 1960, Commander Norman B. Bessac in command.
Assigned to Submarine Squadron 6, Division 62, Scorpiondeparted New London, Connecticut, on 24 August for a two-month deployment in European waters. During that period, she participated in exercises with units of the 6th Fleet and of otherNATO navies. After returning to New England in late October, she trained along the eastern seaboard until May 1961, then crossed the Atlantic again for operations which took her into the summer. On 9 August 1961, she returned to New London, and, a month later, shifted to Norfolk, Virginia. In 1962, she earned the Navy Unit Commendation.
With Norfolk her home port for the remainder of her career,Scorpion specialized in the development of nuclear submarine warfare tactics. Varying her role from hunter to hunted, she participated in exercises which ranged along the Atlantic coast and in the Bermuda and Puerto Rico operating areas; then, from June 1963 – May 1964, she interrupted her operations for an overhaul at Charleston, South Carolina. Resuming duty off the eastern seaboard in late spring, she again interrupted that duty from 4 August-8 October to make a transatlantic patrol. In the spring of 1965, she conducted a similar patrol in European waters.
During the late winter and early spring of 1966, and again in the autumn, she was deployed for special operations. Following the completion of those assignments, her commanding officer received the Navy Commendation Medal for outstanding leadership, foresight, and professional skill. Other Scorpion officers and crewmen were cited for meritorious achievement. Scorpion is reputed to have entered an inland Russian sea during a "Northern Run" in 1966 where it successfully filmed a Soviet missile launch through its periscope before being forced to use its high speed to flee Soviet Navy ships. Scorpion had a reputation for excellence and as a fast attack submarine it was a plum assignment for officers seeking to move up in a Navy in which submarine officers were gaining increasing clout.
On 1 February 1967, Scorpion entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for another extended overhaul. However, instead of the much-needed complete overhaul, she received only emergency repairs to get her back on duty as soon as possible. Operational pressures and complex and unforeseen problems created by the Submarine Safety Program (SUBSAFE) that was initiated after the 1963 loss of Thresher, meant that submarine overhauls went from nine months in length to 36 months. Intensive vetting of submarine component quality required by the SUBSAFE program coupled with various improvements and intensified structural inspections–particularly hull welding inspections using ultrasonic testing–were issues that reduced the availability of critical parts such as seawater piping. Cold War pressures prompted U.S. Submarine Fleet Atlantic (SUBLANT) officers to hunt for ways to reduce overhaul durations. The cost of that last overhaul was nearly one-seventh of those given other nuclear submarines at the same time. This was the result of concerns about the "high percentage of time offline" of nuclear attack submarines which was estimated to be at about 40% of total available duty time.
As Scorpion's original "full overhaul" was whittled down in scope, it was decided it would not receive long-overdue SUBSAFE work. Scorpion would not receive a new, central valve control system; in the event of an emergency, her crew would have to scramble around the engine room to find and manually operate large valves. Crucially, Scorpionwould not receive a fix for the same emergency system that did not work on Thresher, the submarine whose loss was the reason for the existence of the SUBSAFE program. On that sub a pipe leak at depth prompted an emergency shutdown of the submarine's nuclear reactor; powerless, Thresher could still have surfaced if the Emergency Main Ballast Tank blow system worked. It did not. (Later, dockside tests on Thresher's sister sub Tinosaproved that the EMBT system did not work at test depth; moisture in the high-pressure air flasks froze in in-line strainers as the ballast tanks were blown.) Following a dispute between Charleston Naval Ship Yard, which claimed the EMBT system worked as-is, and SUBLANT, which claimed it did not, the EMBT was "tagged out" or listed as unusable. The aforementioned problems with overhaul duration, that saw Scorpion selected for a reduced experimental overhaul program, also caused all SUBSAFE work to be delayed as well during 1967.
The reduced overhaul concept Scorpion went through had been approved by Admiral David Lamar McDonald, theChief of Naval Operations on 17 June 1966. On 20 July, McDonald also allowed deferral of the SUBSAFEextensions, which had otherwise been deemed essential since 1963.
During Scorpion's last six months of operational life, at least two sailors, Electrician's Mate Second Class Daniel Rogers and Radioman Chief Daniel Pettey, struggled to be released from duty aboard Scorpion due to the bad morale problems they witnessed. Rogers sought disqualification from submarine duty–which was then allowed–while Pettey attempted to transfer to the U.S. Army only to be released from Scorpion while in the Mediterranean just months before it was lost.
Other Memories Following his service on Nautilus, Vice Admiral Carr served as the Executive Officer of USS Scorpion (SSN 589) and USS James Monroe (SSBN 622) and as the first Commanding Officer of USS Flasher (SSN 613) and USS John Adams (SSBN 620) (Gold Crew). Shore assignments included the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (Research and Development) and as a senior member of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Examining Board. In 1972 Admiral Carr was assigned as Chief of Staff to the Commander, Submarine Force of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. Promoted to Rear Admiral in 1973, he assumed the duties of Military Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
