Today in History: The Nautilus travels under the North Pole
The first nuclear submarine became the first vessel to journey under the geographical North Pole in 1958.
After four years of service, the world’s first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, accomplished the first undersea voyage to the geographic North Pole in 1958.
On August 3, 1958, the Nautilus dived under the surface at Point Barrow, Alaska, and traveled nearly 1 000 miles under the Arctic ice cap to reach the top of the world. It then travelled on to Iceland, pioneering a new and shorter route from the Pacific to the Atlantic and Europe.
In 1952, the Nautilus’ keel was laid by President Harry Truman, and on 21 January 1954, American first lady Mamie Eisenhower broke a bottle of champagne across its bow as it was launched into the Thames River at Groton, Connecticut.
Commissioned on 30 September 1954, it first ran under nuclear power on the morning of 17 January 1955.
Much larger than the diesel-electric submarines that preceded it, the Nautilus stretched 97m and weighed 3 180 tons. It could remain submerged for almost unlimited periods because its atomic engine needed no airflow and only a very small quantity of nuclear fuel.
On 1 August 1958, the submarine left the north coast of Alaska and dove under the Arctic ice cap with the hope of reaching the geographical North Pole.
The submarine travelled at a depth of about 150m, and the ice cap above varied in thickness from 3 to 15m, with the midnight sun of the Arctic shining in varying degrees through the blue ice. At 11.15pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on 3 August 1958, Commander Anderson announced to his crew: “For the world, our country, and the Navy – the North Pole”. The Nautilus passed under the geographic North Pole without pausing.
The submarine next surfaced in the Greenland Sea between Spitzbergen and Greenland on 5 August. Two days later, it ended its historic journey at Iceland. After a career spanning 25 years and almost 804 672km travelled, the Nautilus was decommissioned on 3 March 1980.
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