By 1966, I had become an instructor in the naval nuclear power plant prototype in Connecticut, a calm classroom life that changed dramatically after an American hydrogen bomb was lost off the coast of Spain. Admiral Hyman Rickover claimed the Navy's existing deep submersibles were inadequate for the difficult search and recovery operation. What was needed, he insisted, was a revolutionary small sub that could go deeper, stay longer, and do more things than anything else in the fleet. He had little backing among the big-ship admirals, but after the frantic 80 day struggle to find and retrieve the missing H-bomb, Rickover gained a clear advantage and he was able to create the NR-1.