USS Nautilus SSN-571

USS Nautilus (SSN-571) was the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine and the first vessel to complete a submerged transit across the North Pole.

In July 1951 the US Congress authorized the construction of a nuclear-powered submarine for the U.S. Navy, which was planned and personally supervised by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, known as the "Father of the Nuclear Navy."[1] On 12 December 1951 the U.S. Department of the Navy announced that the submarine would be called Nautilus—the fourth U.S. Navy vessel officially so named[2]—and would carry the hull number SSN-571.

Nautilus's keel was laid at General Dynamics' Electric Boat Division in Groton, Connecticut by Harry S. Truman, President of the United States, on 14 June 1952, and the ship was designed by John Burnham. She was christened on 21 January 1954 and launched into the Thames River, sponsored by Mamie Eisenhower, the wife of Truman's successor Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nautilus was commissioned on 30 September 1954, under the command of Commander Eugene P. Wilkinson, USN.

Nautilus was powered by the S2W naval reactor, a pressurized water reactor produced for the U.S. Navy by Westinghouse Electric Corporation.