USS Nautilus crossed the North Pole beneath the ice
On this day · 3 August 1958
The first nuclear submarine slipped under the Arctic ice cap and became the first vessel to reach the geographic North Pole.
Just before midnight Eastern time on 3 August 1958, the submarine USS Nautilus glided beneath the geographic North Pole, the first vessel ever to reach it. There was nothing to see — only black water above and roughly 400 feet of ocean below the ice — so Commander William R. Anderson marked the moment over the intercom: “For the world, our country, and the Navy — the North Pole.”
Nautilus was the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, and that was the whole point. A reactor let her stay submerged for days, threading the shallow, ice-choked Arctic basin that had defeated diesel boats. Under the code name Operation Sunshine, she sailed from the Pacific, dived near Point Barrow, and ran 96 hours under the pack ice before surfacing off Greenland.
For 96 hours the Nautilus cruised under the polar ice cap, covering a distance of 1,830 miles.
The voyage proved a submarine could cross the top of the world undetected — a Cold War message as much as a feat of engineering.
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