On the morning of January 17, 1955, USS Nautilus (SSN-571) transmitted four words that changed the history of naval warfare: “Underway on nuclear power.” The message was sent from a submarine operating in Long Island Sound off the Connecticut coast. The world's first nuclear-powered vessel — the first ship in history to be driven by the energy of the atom — had slipped her moorings and was moving under a power source that would make every diesel submarine on earth obsolete. Admiral Hyman Rickover, who had fought for a decade to build her over the skepticism of the naval establishment, allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. Then he went back to work.
The Man Who Made It Happen
You cannot tell the story of Nautilus without telling the story of Rickover. Hyman G. Rickover was a Naval Academy graduate and a nuclear physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project and emerged from World War II convinced that nuclear power was the future of naval propulsion. He was also abrasive, unconventional, and politically skilled in the way that institutional outsiders who survive long enough become politically skilled. He fought the Bureau of Ships, fought the AEC, fought the admirals who preferred conventional submarines, and ultimately won every fight. Nautilus was his ship, his vision, and his most enduring legacy. He also held himself and every man who worked for him to standards that brooked no compromise. The nuclear Navy's culture of absolute technical rigor — which exists to this day — begins with Rickover and with Nautilus.
The Ship Herself
Nautilus (SSN-571) was laid down at Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut on June 14, 1952, and launched on January 21, 1954 — with First Lady Mamie Eisenhower breaking the champagne on her bow. She was 323 feet long, displaced 3,533 tons submerged, and carried a crew of 105 officers and enlisted men. Her S2W reactor — a pressurized water reactor that used enriched uranium fuel — could run for more than two years and over 60,000 miles without refueling. Compared to the diesel-electric submarines of the era, which had to surface regularly to recharge their batteries and were limited in submerged speed, Nautilus was in a different category entirely.
The Polar Transit
In the summer of 1958, Nautilus did something no ship had ever done before: she transited beneath the Arctic ice cap and crossed the geographic North Pole while submerged. Operation Sunshine, as it was called, began in July 1958 when Nautilus departed Pearl Harbor under secret orders. She transited through the Bering Strait, dove beneath the ice north of Alaska, and on August 3, 1958, passed directly beneath the North Pole — achieving the first vessel transit of the polar ice cap in history. The crew received a message from President Eisenhower, and Nautilus surfaced north of Greenland to a hero's welcome. The transit demonstrated in the most dramatic terms possible what nuclear propulsion had made possible: true undersea endurance, the ability to operate anywhere on Earth — including under the polar ice that diesel submarines could never penetrate.
Legacy
Nautilus was decommissioned on March 3, 1980, after 25 years of service and over 500,000 miles traveled. She is preserved as a National Historic Landmark at the Submarine Force Museum in Groton, Connecticut — the same city where she was built, the same waters where she first went underway on nuclear power. The submarine force she made possible grew to include ballistic missile submarines capable of destroying entire cities and fast attack boats that hunt other submarines in the deep ocean. Every nuclear submarine in every navy in the world descended from the ship that Rickover built and Nautilus first proved. Those four words — “Underway on nuclear power” — echo still.
If you served in the submarine force, browse the submarine collection at The Ship's Store — gear honoring the boats and the men of the silent service.