The Navy’s official history describes SSN-571 in five words: “the first nuclear powered submarine.” The fourth Navy ship named Nautilus was commissioned at Groton, Connecticut, on Sept. 30, 1954, with Cmdr. Eugene P. Wilkinson in command, and less than four years later she became the first ship to reach the geographic North Pole.
Her record is measured in firsts: the first nuclear-powered submarine, the longest submerged cruise of her day, the first voyage across the North Pole, and the first Presidential Unit Citation ever issued in peacetime. She ran on nuclear power for a quarter century before she was decommissioned, and she still sits pierside in Groton, a short run from the yard that built her.
The Navy’s official ship history, the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships entry for Nautilus (SSN-571) published by the Naval History and Heritage Command, records that she was laid down on June 14, 1952, at the Electric Boat Co. in Groton, with President Harry S. Truman officiating. She was launched on Jan. 21, 1954, sponsored by Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower, and commissioned that September.
Underway on nuclear power
The boat’s defining moment came before she ever proved anything at sea. On Jan. 17, 1955, according to DANFS, “at 1100, her lines were cast off and she was underway on nuclear power.” The signal she sent that morning became shorthand for a new kind of navy. The Naval History and Heritage Command still marks the occasion; its Nautilus topic page records the 60th anniversary of Nautilus “first signaling ‘underway on nuclear power'” at a Naval Reactors ceremony on Jan. 9, 2015.
The numbers came fast. On her shakedown she stayed submerged all the way to Puerto Rico, covering 1,381 miles in 89.8 hours, which DANFS calls “the longest submerged cruise, to that date, by a submarine.” Nuclear propulsion freed the boat from the surface for days at a time, and the rest of her record follows from that.
Operation Sunshine and the Pole
The polar voyage did not work on the first try. DANFS records that on June 19, 1958, Nautilus entered the Chukchi Sea and “was turned back by deep draft ice in those shallow waters.” The crew waited for better ice conditions, and on July 23 the boat set a course northward again.
The Naval History and Heritage Command’s topic page gives the sequence: Nautilus “submerged in the Barrow Sea on 1 August, transited the geographic North Pole on 3 August, and, after running submerged an additional 96 hours, surfaced off Greenland on 7 August.” DANFS fixes the moment of arrival at 2315 Eastern Daylight Saving Time on Aug. 3, 1958. From the Pole, it says, the boat continued on, “and after 96 hours and 1,830 miles under the ice, she surfaced northeast of Greenland, having completed the first successful voyage across the North Pole.”
For the voyage, per DANFS, Nautilus received the Presidential Unit Citation, “the first ever issued in peace time,” presented by American Ambassador J. H. Whitney.
Half a million miles, then Groton
Nautilus served for more than two more decades after the Pole. DANFS records that in December 1978 she logged her 500,000th mile on nuclear power. She was decommissioned at Mare Island, California, on March 3, 1980.
The Secretary of the Interior designated her a National Historic Landmark on May 20, 1982, according to the Submarine Force Museum’s own history, part of the Naval History and Heritage Command’s museum system. She was towed back to Groton, arriving on July 6, 1985. On April 11, 1986, which the museum notes was 86 years to the day after the establishment of the U.S. Navy Submarine Force, Historic Ship Nautilus and the Submarine Force Museum opened to the public together.
The boat that opened the nuclear age at sea is now the centerpiece of that museum in Groton. Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, marks 72 years since her commissioning.
Top image: USS Nautilus (SSN-571) at the Submarine Force Museum in Groton, Connecticut. Image Credit: Victor-ny — CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Combat Rated editors prior to publication.