Qualla: USS Nautilus (SSN-571)

USS Nautilus (SSN-571): Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. "Underway on nuclear power." Those four words, blinked by signal lamp from the submarine USS Nautilus to the escort tug Skylark on January 17, 1955, announced a revolution in naval warfare and human engineering. The message was almost never sent. Moments after casting off from the pier at Groton, Connecticut, a loud noise erupted from the starboard reduction gear. Under normal circumstances, Commander Eugene Wilkinson would have returned to the dock immediately. But Admiral Hyman Rickover stood beside him on the bridge, press boats circled in the Thames River, and the Father of the Nuclear Navy was not about to let a loose locking pin on a retaining nut end the most anticipated sea trial in American history. Within minutes the fix was made, and the Nautilus slipped past the breakwater into Long Island Sound, carrying with her the future of submarine warfare.

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Image: Public domain

USS Nautilus (SSN-571): From Fiction to Fission

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Z22, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name was no accident. Jules Verne had imagined a submarine called Nautilus in his 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, a vessel powered by an inexhaustible energy source that could roam the world's oceans without surfacing. Eighty years later, Captain Hyman G. Ri...

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Image: Z22 | CC BY-SA 3.0

USS Nautilus (SSN-571): Breaking Every Record in the Book

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The Nautilus rewrote the submarine record books almost immediately. In May 1955, she traveled from New London to San Juan, Puerto Rico entirely submerged, covering the distance in less than 90 hours at the highest sustained speed ever recorded for a submarine. It was the longest ...

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Image: Public domain

USS Nautilus (SSN-571): Ninety Degrees North

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Official US Navy photograph courtesy of the US Navy Arctic Submarine Laboratory., Public domain. The Soviets launched Sputnik in October 1957, and America needed a technological triumph of its own. President Eisenhower ordered the Navy to send a submarine under the North Pole. Under Commander William R. Anderson, Nautilus departed Seattle on June 9, 1958, for Operation Sunsh...

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Image: Official US Navy photograph courtesy of the US Navy Arctic Submarine Laboratory. | Public domain

USS Nautilus (SSN-571): A Quarter Century of Service

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tangopaso, Public domain. For the next two decades, Nautilus served as a workhorse of the Atlantic Fleet. She deployed with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, participated in NATO exercises, and during October 1962, joined the naval blockade of Cuba during the missile crisis. By May 1966, she had logge...

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Image: Tangopaso | Public domain

USS Nautilus (SSN-571): The Ship That Remembers

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Victor-ny, CC BY-SA 3.0. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1982 and named the official state ship of Connecticut in 1983, Nautilus was towed back to Groton after an extensive conversion and opened to the public on April 11, 1986, as part of the Submarine Force Library and Museum. Today, she rece...

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Image: Victor-ny | CC BY-SA 3.0