Carr, Kenneth, VADM

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.

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.