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Submarines · from 1947

USS Nautilus (SSN-571)

First nuclear-powered submarine of the US Navy.

History

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.

Text from Wikipedia: USS Nautilus (SSN-571), CC BY-SA 4.0, lightly trimmed.

Key dates

  1. 1947
    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.
  2. 1952
    Nautilus's keel was laid at General Dynamics' Electric Boat Division in Groton, Connecticut by Harry S. Truman on 14 June 1952.
  3. 1957
    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.
  4. 1958
    On 25 April 1958, Nautilus was underway again for the West Coast under Commander William R. Anderson.
  5. 1958
    During the period 22 July 1958 to 5 August 1958, USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear powered ship, added to her list of historic achievements by crossing the Arctic Ocean from the Bering Sea to the Greenland Sea, passing submerged beneath the geographic North Pole.
  6. 1964
    On her return, she joined in fleet exercises until entering the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for her second overhaul on 17 January 1964.
  7. 1966
    On 2 May 1966, Nautilus returned to her homeport to resume operations with the Atlantic Fleet, and she logged her 300,000th nautical mile (560,000 km; 350,000 mi) underway that month.
  8. 1982
    Nautilus was designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Secretary of the Interior on 20 May 1982.
  9. 2002
    She underwent a five-month preservation in 2002 at Electric Boat at a cost of approximately $4.7 million (~$7.81 million in 2024).

Dates and events quoted from the same Wikipedia article (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Records that place someone aboard this ship

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More history

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