WILKINSON-EUGENE

FIRST COMMANDER OF FIRST U.S. NUCLEAR POWERED SUBMARINE

Excerpts from article published in San Diego Union-Tribune on July 19, 2013

At 11 AM on January 17, 1955, Eugene P. Wilkinson found himself making history.  As the first commanding officer of the Navy’s first nuclear-powered submarine, he ordered all lines cast off and signaled the historic message: “Underway on nuclear power.”  The missive from the USS Nautilus was almost as memorable for its brevity.  According to the Submarine Force Library and Museum, CDR Wilkinson was advised by naval public relations to craft a “historic message” for the event.  He had other ideas.  “Listen.  We’re doing our part getting ourselves, the ship and its systems checked out and ready,” the museum quoted him as saying.  “You gentlemen are public relations experts.  Write a historic message, and we’ll send it.  “That took care of them for a day and a half,” he said.  “Then they gave me a message that was one and a quarter typewritten pages long with some elegant-sounding words.”  As the history books show, then CDR Wilkinson opted for his own economy of words.

Retired VADM Wilkinson died of natural causes July 11 at his Del Mar home.  He was 94.  Eugene Wilkinson was born August 10, 1918, in Long Beach, the youngest of two to Dennis Wilkinson and Daisy Parks.  Orphaned at a young age after his father was killed in a car accident and his mother died from a sudden illness, he was raised by his grandparents, Dennis and Lillian Wilkinson, who ran a creamery in Holtville.  Graduating with a degree in physics and chemistry in 1938 from what was then San Diego State College, he taught chemistry and mathematics there for two years before receiving his Navy commission in December 1940.  His first tour of duty was aboard the heavy cruiser USS Louisville.  A year later he entered the Naval Submarine School in New London, Connecticut, graduating in March 1942.  During World War II, VADM Wilkinson participated in eight submarine war patrols earning the Silver Star for valor and the Navy Unit Commendation.  From 1948 to 1950 he studied atomic physics and nuclear reactors at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago.  He later served as the chief of the operations branch and representative of the Bureau of Ships at the Atomic Energy Commission offices in the Pittsburgh area.

He was commanding officer of three submarines, the USS Volador, the USS Sea Robin and the USS Wahoo, before ADM Hyman G. Rickover, the father of the nuclear Navy, selected him to skipper the Nautilus.  The two remained friends until Rickover’s death in 1986.  “Rickover didn’t want anybody around who couldn’t count his marbles.  That’s how he got picked,” said Jack Sadler of his friend VADM Wilkinson.  “He was just very intelligent and he wasn’t a braggart.  “He was a humble man, a smart man.  That’s why Rickover liked him so much.”  For commanding the Nautilus, VADM. Wilkinson received the Legion of Merit.  In 1959, he became the first commanding officer of the first nuclear-powered surface ship, the guided missile cruiser USS Long Beach, a post he held until 1963.  He retired from the Navy in 1974 as Vice Admiral in command of all submarine warfare operations.

In civilian life VADM. Wilkinson was executive vice president of the technology company Data Design Laboratories.  From 1980 to 1985 he was the president of the nonprofit Institute of Nuclear Power Operations which was established to improve safety standards after the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania.  VADM Wilkinson was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Nuclear Society and the American Society of Naval Engineers.  He was also a member of oversight committees for 23 nuclear plants.  VADM Wilkinson is survived by three sons, one daughter; four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.  He was predeceased by his wife of 58 years, the former Janice Thuli, in 2000.  Burial was at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego.

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)