The history of Nautilus

DOUG JOHNSON: Welcome to American Mosaic in VOA Special English. I'm Doug Johnson. Today we answer a question about the first nuclear-powered submarine. DOUG JOHNSON: Our listener question this week comes from Italy. Robert Corsino wants to know the history of Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine. There have been many ships named Nautilus, but Nautilus 571 has a special place in history. In nineteen fifty-one, Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover urged the United States Congress to provide money for the first nuclear-powered submarine. Before that time, submarines had operated on diesel fuel and electricity. The older kind of submarine used in World War Two could stay under water for only about forty-eight hours. Engineers thought the new nuclear submarine would be able to stay under water for two weeks or more. After Congress provided the money, the General Dynamics company began building Nautilus in Groton, Connecticut. Work was finished in about two years. Nautilus was put to sea for the first time on January seventeenth, nineteen fifty-five. The ship's captain sent out a historic message: "Underway on nuclear power." Nautilus was a large submarine. It was about ninety-eight meters long. It carried eleven officers and a crew of about one hundred men. For its first trip, the submarine sailed under water from New London, Connecticut to San Juan, Puerto Rico. It traveled two thousand one hundred kilometers in less than ninety hours. This was the fastest any submarine had ever traveled. In nineteen fifty-eight, Nautilus made another historic trip. The secret project was called "Operation Sunshine." The submarine sailed under and around the North Pole. This was the first time any submarine had made such a dangerous trip. In nineteen sixty, Nautilus was deployed to the Mediterranean Sea to become the first nuclear-powered submarine in the United States Sixth Fleet. For almost twenty years, Nautilus sailed to many ports around the world. But by nineteen seventy-nine, the world's first nuclear-powered submarine had become an old ship. Its last trip that year was from Connecticut to California. It was then "decommissioned" or retired by the navy. But the life of Nautilus did not end there. The sub was brought back to the East Coast of the United States and became a floating museum in nineteen eighty-six. It is now a major part of the United States Navy Submarine Force Museum and Library near New London, Connecticut. Each year thousands of people visit the museum and go on board the submarine that made history -- the U.S.S. Nautilus. Source: Voice of America