History Spotlight, 2/4

On February 4, 1957, the world's first operational nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, logged its 60,000th nautical mile, matching the endurance record set by its fictional namesake in Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The Nautilus was the dream of Admiral Hyman Rickover who is known as "The Father of the Nuclear Navy."

Prior to the Nautilus, submarines weren't truly underwater vessels. In reality, they were surface ships that could travel underwater for brief periods of time. Subs during WWII functioned off a combination of diesel engines and batteries. When the sub was on the surface, it used its diesels to propel the ship and charge the batteries. When it was submerged, it used the batteries to drive the engines. When the ship was submerged, it was slow. I don't recall how slow, but it was something like four knots. When it surfaced, it went much faster, but was visible on radar and vulnerable to attacks. On top of that, their limited depth ability (something like less than 500 feet) made them visible to aircraft, especially in the crystal-clear waters of the South Pacific. While it's true that some subs had a snorkel apparatus hooked to the periscope to allow the diesels to run while submerged (the Germans tried this when their wolf packs were being hunted down in the North Atlantic) it still made the sub visible to radar. And, if you've ever been snorkeling and had a wave overtop your snorkel, you know what that's like.

Hymie Rickover was trained as an electrical engineer and served on a sub during the pre-WWII years so he was well aware of their limitations After the war he received training in nuclear engineering at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and saw the light and organized a team to design a nuclear generator to power a submarine. The obstacles were substantial, but the biggest one was that a reactor that would generate the amount of power needed was the size of a city block. Hymie Rickover was not a man who let "It's impossible" stand in the way of his dreams, however, and on September 30, 1954 the USS Nautilus was commissioned. It went to sea on January 17, 1955 and sent the famous radio message, "Underway on nuclear power."

On its shakedown cruise, it traveled, underwater, 1,100 miles from Groton, Connecticut to San Juan, Puerto Rico, a record for underwater travel at the time. On August 3, 1959, it became the first water vessel to reach the geographic North Pole while traveling from the Bering Strait to Greenland. These days, the Nautilus is a floating museum in Groton, Connecticut. If you're ever in Groton and have a few hours to kill, I highly recommend checking it out.