In 1931, Sir Hubert began to assemble his scientific research mission to the North Pole. Wilkins also envisioned the use of submarines to establish weather stations in the polar regions, and as a means of transporting cargo between Europe and the United States over shorter distances by sailing over the roof of the world. Both men had crossed the North Pole before (Wilkins by airplane and Ellsworth by airship), and both saw that the submarine as a means of safely reaching the Arctic to conduct scientific experiments. The actual plan of the expedition, suggested by that expedition's commander Vilhjalmur Stefansson, came to fruition during Wilkins's honeymoon in 1930, while staying with Lincoln Ellsworth at his Swiss Castle in Schloss Lenzburg. Sir Hubert Wilkins first got the idea of a submarine expedition to the North Pole during his first polar expedition in 1913. In 2009, he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national-security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast. submarine fleet would maintain technological superiority over its Soviet Navy for the remainder of the Cold War. A trailblazer, Nautilus’s success ensured that the U.S. During its career it had made 2,507 dives and traveled 513,550 miles without incident. Not only that, but the submarine proved that nuclear propulsion was safe and efficient, paving the way for an all-nuclear U.S. Just nine years after the atomic bomb test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, Nautilus was underway and using nuclear power. In an era where technological progress was rapid, Nautilus was a stunning achievement. It remained in service until 1979, and in 1985 was opened to the public as a permanent exhibition at the Submarine Force Library and Museum. Still, the combination of vibration noise, and a hull design quickly rendered obsolete by the experiments conducted on the USS Albacore, meant it was more of a second-line ship, participating in antisubmarine warfare exercises far from Soviet forces. One of its first operations of note was participation in the blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although the use of nuclear power gave it a five-knot advantage over the conventionally powered Tang class, the Type XXI–inspired hull was a compromise between surface and subsurface handling, preventing Nautilus from reaching nuclear power’s promise of thirty-plus-knot sustained speeds.Īfter an overhaul in 1960, Nautilus joined the Atlantic Fleet and served as a regular attack submarine. The United States had not yet developed the teardrop-shaped hull design that is still in use today, and Nautilus resembled the German Type XXI U-boat, the most highly advanced design of the war and the basis for many immediate postwar submarine designs, including the Soviet Whiskey class and UK Porpoise class. While Nautilus would be powered by an all-American nuclear power plant, its hull was German in origin. The ship would be 320 feet long, eighty-two feet longer than the conventionally powered Tang class, and displace four thousand tons submerged, twice as much as the Tangs. This would give the Nautilus a maximum speed of twenty-three knots. The submarine, Nautilus, would be powered by a S2W Submarine Thermal Reactor, a pressurized water atomic reactor capable of generating up to 13,400 horsepower. Moore explained in their book Cold War Submarines, nuclear-powered submarines would have a virtually unlimited range, be faster above and below the surface of the ocean, generate more power per volume than diesel engines, and operate more easily than diesel engines.Ĭonstruction of a nuclear-powered submarine-the first nuclear-powered vessel ever-began in 1951. Nuclear power promised to eliminate the need for massive quantities of ship fuel, reducing the logistical demands of a fleet at sea. Navy, used to traveling long distances to fight its battles, was an early fan of nuclear propulsion. That ship was the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus. Hyman Rickover, would oversee the construction of a unique ship, the first to take advantage of the benefits of nuclear propulsion. The department, headed by legendary naval officer Adm. Navy established a Nuclear Power Branch, kicking off a revolution in ship propulsion. Nautilus, a Short History: In 1948, the U.S.
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