![]() Finally, in 1956, Rickover went for the first time to meet with his British counterparts to discuss the possibility of sharing nuclear-propulsion secrets. The under-ice voyage deeply shook up the Kremlin, which suddenly realized that the polar ice no longer protected the Soviet navy’s northern ports from stealthy underwater intruders.Īround this time, the Soviets, French, and British had been trying to build nuclear submarines of their own but had made only faltering progress. It served as an American technological response to the astounding launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik satellite the previous October. The passage by the sub beneath the North Pole ice cap in summer 1958 was a major Cold War event. Nautilus quickly smashed every record for underwater operations. The arrival of nuclear propulsion was no less momentous than the transition from sail to steam in the 1800s. In 1955, when the USS Nautilus went to sea, it was the first sub capable of staying underwater and operating at full speed not for hours or days but weeks. nuclear-powered submarine was named Nautilus after the submarine in Verne’s famous novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. ![]() But with astounding speed for a major technological breakthrough, Jules Verne’s dream to “live and move freely under the sea” came true. ![]() None of this was simple to engineer, and all of it came about at great risk and cost. Watkins, USN, Commander Submarine Force Atlantic Fleet, and Representative Melvin Price, Democrat of Illinois. Rickover, USN, Director Nuclear Power Division, Bureau of Ships, Navy Department Frank T. Shown on the deck of the Nautilus are left to right, Representative Sterling Cole, Republican of New York, and Ranking House Minority Member of the Committee H. ![]()
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