sels which were lent to Russia which meant that we now had four Wind class vessels in this country and three in Russia. With the return of those vessels from Russia, we had the original seven, the Coast Guard operating three, the Eastwind, Northwind, and Westwind, and the Navy operating four, the Burton Island, Staten Island, Atka, and Edisto.

Mr. LENNON. They were all the Wind class?

Commander RINEHART. Yes, sir.

Mr. LENNON. I thought you said there were five transferred. Was it four or five?

Commander RINEHART. There were five. There were four of the Wind class, and the Glacier.

Mr. LENNON. And the Glacier?

Commander RINEHART. Yes, sir.

Admiral TRIMBLE. The Navy built their Wind ships from our designs so that they were all the same except for the Glacier. I would like to add one thing in response to the question asked about the Navy feasibility study of 1963. It wasn't exactly fund limitation that kept this from proceeding. I think this should not be on the record. (Discussion off the record.)

Mr. LENNON. How many of the nuclear-powered icebreakers does Russia have now?

Commander RINEHART. Russia has only one nuclear icebreaker now, the Lenin, and we have unclassified information that either one or two I believe the consensus is that there are two are now being designed, have been designed, and one is in the construction stage.

One piece of information indicates that the first of these vessels will be launched this year.

Mr. LENNON. What is your objective as engineer-in-charge as a comparison between the non-nuclear- or nuclear-powered icebreaker with respect to serviceability, range, deployment, and just basically what is your fundamental feeling about it? What is the advantage of one over the other?

Commander RINEHART. The nuclear-powered vessel obviously has greater capabilities than a fossil-fuel-powered vessel. The nuclearpowered vessel can operate indefinitely in the ice without withdrawing to refuel. This also permits more complete use of the vessel.

I think one example of this is the well-known case of our nuclearpowered submarines which are able to operate more or less continuously with an exchange of crews. It does have this difficulty: That if high use of the vessel is made, there will have to be some changes in our personnel policies, I believe. Another disadvantage of the nuclear vessel is its high initial cost on a ship-for-ship basis. However, this disadvantage is largely discounted over the life cycle of the vessel because of the lower nuclear fuel costs compared to fossil fuel.

Mr. LENNON. Who will make the final determination and recommendation with respect to whether or not this vessel which is now being funded for design will be a nuclear- or non-nuclear-powered icebreaker?

Commander RINEHART. I would say that the Coast Guard would make the recommendation and that this committee would have a great deal to say about whether that recommendation would be accepted.

Mr. LENNON. You mean if you get beyond the Secretary of Transportation and the Bureau of the Budget?

Commander RINEHART. I will defer to Admiral Trimble.

Admiral TRIMBLE. Of course, the Coast Guard will be the one to draw the conclusions. We will make our recommendations to the Department and the Department of course has to deal with the Bureau of the Budget.

Mr. LENNON. When it gets to this committee in whatever form it is, will we know what you did recommend to the Department of Transportation?

Admiral TRIMBLE. Of course, Mr. Lennon, we are permitted to respond freely to questions that are asked us just like Tuesday when you asked what we had asked the Treasury Department. We are permitted under the rules to respond to any question that you ask.

Mr. LENNON. You are still on the record for the future I am thinking about. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. All right, Commander.

Commander RINEHART. Concurrent with the transfer agreement which we have discussed, the Coast Guard in the summer of 1965 mounted a survey and design project to formulate an approach to development of a replacement icebreaker design. The success of this project to date is largely due to Lieutenant Commanders Vance and Schumacher of the Office of Engineering under the cognizance of the past and present Chiefs of the Naval Engineering Division.

The plan developed is shown in the next slide.

This gross plan is only a brief summary of the detailed work breakdown structure and PERT diagrams necessary to plan for such a complex and costly project.

Last year this committee authorized and Congress approved $1 million for feasibility studies and design. The Coast Guard then constituted a new branch known as the Icebreaker Design Branch. While this Branch consists of many people who had not had long experience in ship design and of course who are somewhat hampered by the lack of a previous organization, nevertheless the members of this Branch do represent a total of 14 years' service on icebreakers, and their training and intelligence is adequate to proceed with such a design.

The next slide shows a milestone chart and the extent to which the plan has been implemented. Significant dates are February 6 of this year, when we received the results of a contracted mission study. On the 3d of March we will receive the final results of our propulsion feasibility study. Two days prior to that on the 1st of March we will commence the preliminary design of this vessel. These dates have been or will be met and preliminary design will continue throughout the remainder of this fiscal year.

The preliminary design should be completed by the 1st of September 1967. Provided the funds are authorized and the present schedule is adhered to, the contract design stage will commence on the 18th of December in 1967 and be completed on the 4th of December 1968.

This would enable construction of the first vessel to commence in June 1969 with delivery in 1973.

Mr. LENNON. May I ask one more question?

The CHAIRMAN. I want to show the films and I think we can all then ask questions. Go ahead.

Mr. LENNON. Go ahead with the film.

Commander RINEHART. A successful icebreaker must have many special features designed to meet its unique operating missions.

First, it is away from its home port for long periods of time, as much as 7 months, most of the time in a hostile environment.

Maximum self-sufficiency and crew habitability are essential. While these are not combatant vessels they nevertheless are subjected to rugged service in isolated areas frequently not in the company of other vessels.

Sturdy design with high reliability is therefore necessary.

I now have some slides showing the general areas of operations for these vessels. This shows the Northwind operating in the Arctic.

Mr. MORTON. Commander, I notice you still have the guns on all of them. I was on the Glacier for a couple of days in the Antarctic. One of the problems was maintaining the guns and guncrews on a ship that was overcrowded. Why do you keep those guns on there?

Commander RINEHART. This is a subject of a certain amount of internal controversy also, sir.

Mr. MORTON. I would think so.

Commander RINEHART. This shows the Northwind proceeding through partial coverage. I think another slide will show that even though very little of the ice shows above the water it is considerably thicker than this looks.

This is a picture of Eastwind riding up onto the ice in a ramming condition.

This is a picture of some of the moderate ice you saw the vessel proceeding through before. This ice is probably about 4 feet thick. Frankly, ice thickness is usually measured by eyeball and is as thick as the viewer wants it to be.

This is a picture showing Glacier and I believe Eastwind escorting a vessel down in the McMurdo area. While they are proceeding through a previously broken path, this is very difficult going.

It causes great difficulty with the ice getting in the screws. In many cases it is worse than proceeding through uniformly thick ice because there are variations of thickness.

Broken pieces of ice are frequently standing on end. Where they may only be 4 or 5 feet thick they may extend down many times that. This is another picture showing this same group of ships. I think this also demonstrates the hostile environment that I mentioned.

This is a picture of Glacier offloading on to the ice shelf. It was obviously taken before this year since she is still in her gray paint.

This final slide shows that even on our Great Lakes the ice conditions are not light. This is a picture of the Mackinaw, the one which you saw in the aerial view which showed the wide beam.

This vessel I don't believe ever did have guns on it.

Obviously no ship should be built unless there is a good reason for it. A reason for a ship is generally called a statement of its mission. We have conducted extensive studies into areas of potential increase of the mission of these ships as compared to present missions and we will continue to fill out those studies.

We have obtained information from our own Coast Guard icebreaking experts, from the Department of Defense personnel, and from outside contracted studies.

The summary of the mission is shown in the next slide: direct military operation; military logistics support; scientific operations; scientific logistics support; and commercial logistics support.

The following slides will delineate some of the tasks under those missions. This is a slide which shows some of the tasks, under the direct military support mission. Many of these missions I think can be identified as contingency missions, that you would only carry out when it became necessary.

The second grouping at the bottom of the page shows missions that we are presently carrying out and which might be expected to expand in the future, supply of military bases in the polar regions.

Mr. MORTON. Do the same ships operate in both polar regions?

Commander RINEHART. Yes, sir. I don't believe the Glacier has operated in the Arctic. I think she is generally reserved for the Antarctic operations but most of our ships, most of these Wind classes have served both in the Artic and in the Antarctic, sometimes in succeeding seasons.

They would operate in the Arctic for the summer and go to the Antarctic for winter operations.

I might add that such type of operation does place considerable strain on the vessels.

These are the other three mission areas. The scientific operations are now being carried out on a basis of "we do as much as we can." We can see that in the future this may become one of the major missions of these vessels.

If we can provide satisfactory platforms in the polar regions for scientific observations I feel sure that we will have people who will be willing to use those facilities and these people have so indicated when queried in our mission study.

The next group of tasks might be generally associated with our support of the Deep Freeze operation in the Antarctic at the present time.

The final one is in a slightly vague area. Actually, we do not conduct the type of commercial logistic support that the Russians do. They are now attempting to keep their northern sealane open at least a good part of the year. We can see that possibly with the development of resources in certain areas of Alaska that this might become a very important mission.

After these mission tasks are massaged and put into some kind of hard figures we begin to get some idea of what the capabilities of these icebreakers must be.

They must be capable of deep polar penetrations. We feel that the capability to break continuously 9 to 10 feet of ice will enable us to traverse a good part of the Arctice area. They must have high endurance both because of the expenditure of large amounts of power while they are in ice due to the fact that it is undesirable to withdraw them from the ice and also due to the possibility that they might become stranded in the ice. They must have a large cargo capacity to carry all the necessary supplies and also cargo for remote bases and also scientific equipment.

I feel, and this is concurred in by the Navy, that these vessels should have a relatively high transit speed of the order of 17 knots or better. They must have extensive deck space for oceanographic equipment and laboratory space in order to handle the data and samples that are obtained. The vessel also must have excellent maneuverability because of the necessity for it to assist other vessels and it should have towing capability in case these vessels become stranded.

I would like now to come to one of our most important studies. I think the comments that have been made this morning indicate that this committee also feels that this is at the core of our design problem. In July of this past year, we contracted with the NUS Corp. to perform an icebreaker propulsion systems feasibility study. study was divided into three phases, the first phase being to compare various available propulsion systems.

This

The second phase was to evaluate the implications of nuclear power to the Coast Guard since one of the plants in the first phase was a nuclear powerplant and the third phase was to optimize a nuclear powerplant should it appear desirable.

This phase has since been expanded to optimize two other conventional plants.

In order to evaluate propulsion plants it was first necessary to select typical vessels since obviously a propulsion plant by itself is meaningless. We evaluated these propulsion plants at four power levels from 15,000 to 75,000 horsepower in increments of 20,000.

Perhaps the only other figure of interest there are in the bottom line which shows the size of vessels which resulted. The first of the ships, a 15,000-horsepower vessel, is slightly larger than the Glacier which is 8,600 tons.

The second one at 35,000 horsepower is similar to some of the vessels you saw on the list of foreign icebreakers. The other two vessels are larger than any now existing.

These are the candidate powerplants that we investigated. Of these powerplants we selected four for detailed study. One was the oil-fired steam turbine. The second one was the oil-fired diesel engine. The third was a gas turbine plant and the fourth was a nuclear pressurized water reactor with a steam turbine.

It was decided that the only presently feasible conversion system would be electric drive. While it was felt earlier that this would be direct current electric drive, later studies have shown that it might be desirable to use alternating current generators with direct current

motors.

This would have added advantage in that if these generators were designed to generate 60-cycle current, the generating capability could be used to provide a remote power source.

It was found that the oil-fired steam turbine could be built in any size, that the oil-fired diesel could be obtained at discreet levels up to 55,000 horsepower. That doesn't mean in one plant but it means total plant configurations, horsepower levels of perhaps 3,000, 6,000, 9,000,

12,000.

The oil-fired gas turbine could be obtained in fewer discreet levels but could be used also up to 55,000 and the nuclear steam turbine was technically feasible over the entire range.

The next slide, please.