The first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, is launched
On this day · 21 January 1954
A champagne bottle, a Connecticut shipyard, and the first warship that no longer had to surface for air.
On January 21, 1954, First Lady Mamie Eisenhower swung a bottle of champagne against the bow of the USS Nautilus at the Electric Boat yard in Groton, Connecticut, and the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine slid into the Thames River.
Every submarine before her had been, at heart, a surface ship that could duck underwater for a while. Diesel-electric boats had to surface or snorkel to run their engines and recharge batteries. The Nautilus, driven by a compact reactor, carried no such leash. She could stay submerged for weeks, limited mainly by her crew’s food and nerves.
The payoff came quickly. Commissioned later that year, the Nautilus shattered submerged speed and endurance records, and in 1958 became the first vessel to cross beneath the North Pole, threading the ice from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
She turned the submarine from a vessel that hid underwater into one that lived there.
Sources & references
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