USS Nautilus (SSN-571) was the world's first nuclear-powered boat, nuclear-powered submarine, and the first submarine to complete a submerged transit of the North Pole on 3 August 1958. Her initial commanding officer was Eugene "Dennis" Wilkinson, a widely respected naval officer who set the stage for many of the protocols of today's Nuclear Navy in the US and who had a storied career during military service and afterwards.
Nautilus shares the name of the fictional submarine in Jules Verne's classic 1870 science fiction novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and the USS Nautilus (SS-168) that served with distinction in World War II.
The Nautilus was authorized in 1951. Construction began in 1952, and it was launched in January 1954, sponsored by Mamie Eisenhower, wife of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was commissioned the following September into the United States Navy and was delivered to the Navy in 1955.
Her nuclear propulsion allowed her to remain submerged far longer than diesel-electric submarines, and she broke many records in her first years of operation and traveled to locations previously beyond the limits of submarines. In operation, she revealed a number of limitations in her design and construction, and this information was used to improve subsequent submarines.
Nautilus was decommissioned in 1980 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1982. She has been preserved as a museum ship at the Submarine Force Library and Museum in Groton, Connecticut, where she receives around 250,000 visitors per year.
The conceptual design of the first nuclear submarine began in March 1950 as project SCB 64. In July 1951, Congress authorized the construction of a nuclear-powered submarine for the U.S. Navy, which was planned and personally supervised by Captain Hyman G. Rickover, known as the "Father of the Nuclear Navy." On 12 December 1951, the Department of the Navy announced that the submarine would be called Nautilus, the fourth U.S. Navy vessel to bear the name. The boat carried the hull number SSN-571.
Designers drew inspiration from the advanced hydrodynamic hull design of the German Type XXI U-boat developed during World War II. The Type XXI U-boat featured a streamlined shape, which enabled greater underwater speed and efficiency compared to earlier submarine designs that were primarily optimized for surface travel. Its revolutionary approach to underwater performance influenced post-war submarine development worldwide, including the U.S. Navy's decision to focus on fully submerged operations.
Nautilus's keel was laid at General Dynamics' Electric Boat Division in Groton, Connecticut by Harry S. Truman on 14 June 1952. She was christened on 21 January 1954 and launched into the Thames River, sponsored by Mamie Eisenhower. Nautilus was commissioned on 30 September 1954 under the command of Commander Eugene P. Wilkinson.
Nautilus was powered by the Submarine Thermal Reactor (STR), later designated the S2W reactor, a pressurized water reactor produced for the US Navy by Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory developed the basic reactor plant design used in Nautilus after being given the assignment on 31 December 1947 to design a nuclear power plant for a submarine. Nuclear power had a crucial advantage in submarine propulsion because it is a zero-emission process that consumes no air. This design is the basis for nearly all of the US nuclear-powered submarines and surface combat ships, and was adapted by other countries for naval nuclear propulsion. The first actual prototype for Nautilus was constructed and tested by the Argonne National Laboratory in 1953 at S1W at the Naval Reactors Facility, part of the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho.
Nautilus remained dockside after her commissioning for further construction and testing. At 11:00 a.m. January 17, 1955, the crew dropped the mooring lines and Wilkinson, on the bridge with Rickover, gave the command to back. When the boat was scarcely clear of the pier, the engineering officer in the maneuvering room reported to Wilkinson on the bridge that there was a loud noise in the starboard reduction gear and that he had switched to electrical propulsion. Under normal circumstances, Wilkinson would have returned at once to the dock, but in full view of the press boats and other small craft attracted to the scene, Rickover was determined not to terminate the trial unless it was necessary. While the boat proceeded down the river on the port propeller alone, Panoff and the engineering officer inspected the noisy gear. It took but a few minutes to replace a loose locking pin on a retaining nut, and Wilkinson shifted back to steam propulsion. As the Nautilus slipped down the Thames past the breakwater into Long Island Sound, a signalman on the submarine blinked to the escort tug Skylark: "Underway on nuclear power." On 10 May, she headed south for her shakedown cruise. She traveled 1,100 nmi (2,000 km; 1,300 mi) from New London to San Juan, Puerto Rico and covered 1,200 nmi (2,200 km; 1,400 mi) in less than 90 hours, submerged the entire way. This was the longest submerged cruise by a submarine at the time and at the highest sustained speed ever recorded.
From 1955 to 1957, Nautilus continued to be used to investigate the effects of increased submerged speeds and endurance. These improvements rendered the progress made in anti-submarine warfare during World War II virtually obsolete. Radar and anti-submarine aircraft had proved crucial in defeating submarines during the war, but they proved ineffective against a vessel able to move quickly out of an area, change depth quickly, and stay submerged for very long periods.
On 4 February 1957, Nautilus logged her 60,000th nautical mile (110,000 km; 69,000 mi), matching the endurance of the fictional Nautilus described in Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. In May, she departed for the Pacific Coast to participate in coastal exercises and the fleet exercise operation "Home Run," which acquainted units of the Pacific Fleet with the capabilities of nuclear submarines.
Nautilus returned to New London, Connecticut on 21 July and departed again on 19 August for her first voyage of 1,200 nmi (2,200 km; 1,400 mi) under the polar pack ice. She then headed for the Eastern Atlantic to participate in NATO exercises and to conduct a tour of various British and French ports where she was inspected by defense personnel of those countries. She arrived back at New London on 28 October, underwent upkeep, and then conducted coastal operations until the spring.
Operation Sunshine – under the North Pole
President Eisenhower ordered the U.S. Navy to attempt a submarine transit of the North Pole as a technological showpiece following the Soviet Union's successful launch of Sputnik. On 25 April 1958, Nautilus was underway again for the West Coast under Commander William R. Anderson. She stopped at San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle, then began her history-making polar transit under "Operation Sunshine", leaving Seattle on 9 June. On 19 June, she entered the Chukchi Sea but was turned back by deep drift ice in those shallow waters. On 28 June, she arrived at Pearl Harbor to await better ice conditions.
By 23 July, she set a course northward. She submerged in the Barrow Sea Valley on 1 August, and she became the first watercraft to reach the geographic North Pole on 3 August at 2315 EDT. The ability to navigate at extreme latitudes without surfacing was enabled by the technology of the North American Aviation N6A-1 Inertial Navigation System, a naval modification of the N6A used in the Navaho cruise missile; it had been installed on Nautilus and Skate after initial sea trials on USS Compass Island in 1957. She continued on from the North Pole and surfaced northeast of Greenland after 96 hours and 1,590 nmi (2,940 km; 1,830 mi) under the ice, having completed the first successful submerged voyage around the North Pole. The technical details of this mission were planned by scientists from the Naval Electronics Laboratory, including Dr. Waldo Lyon who accompanied Nautilus as chief scientist and ice pilot.