![]() The advent of nuclear power for ship propulsion had a profound effect on everyone involved in undersea warfare. For most of her 25 years in the depths, Nautilus served in the fleet as a good will ship and, in her military role, as a target submarine in anti-submarine warfare exercises and as an attack submarine. On August 3, 1958, to much acclaim and world-wide publicity, she became the first ship to reach the geographic north pole. In 1957, Nautilus became the first submarine to travel under the polar ice pack. She remained an experimental testbed for her entire career and was deactivated in March 1980, designated a national landmark and towed to Groton in July 1985 to begin her new career as a museum.ĭriven by the world's first nuclear propulsion system, Nautilus was preordained to set records and accomplish "firsts." On her maiden voyage to Puerto Rico in May 1955, Nautilus remained submerged for 1,381 miles and 89.9 hours, the longest submerged cruise to that date, by a submarine and at the highest sustained submerged speed heretofore recorded for a period of more than one hour's duration. On 17 January 1955 she pulled away from the dock at Groton CT and signalled at 1100, "underway on nuclear power", then proceeded to make the longest submerged passage in history, to Puerto Rico breaking the highest sustained submerge record en route. Authorized in August 1951, she joined the fleet on 30 September 1954, though remained dockside for several months while fitting out. Nautilus was the world's first nuclear powered warship, and the first submarine to be equipped with a nuclear reactor. After USS Nautilus (SSN-571) American submarines had virtually unlimited submerged endurance and the ability to conduct extended patrols in a hostile environment - a practice that became highly secret and routine over nearly fifty years of Cold War. Rather than a surface ship capable of submerging when the need arose, this submarine's natural environment lay below the surface.
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