field of the periscope up, bringing my eye, through magnification, 

 within a few feet of the underside of the floes, which appeared to 

 be scudding overhead like grey clouds. It was a fascinating but 

 eerie experience." 



On the first trial trip under the ice the Nautilus tried to surface 

 in a pool but crashed into solid ice overhead (a block of ice floating 

 in the pool) and the periscope was smashed. When they surfaced, 

 the crew managed to repair the periscope by means of stainless 

 steel welding. It took fifteen hours to do the job in a gale force wind. 



With equipment now working satisfactorily, Anderson decided 

 to make his probe deep into the heart of the Arctic Ocean, hoping 

 that it might be possible to reach the Pole 660 miles away — in a 

 return journey of four or five days. When Les Kelly, commander 

 of the escort submarine Trigger standing by, radioed Anderson and 

 asked how far north he intended going, Anderson cagily repUed: 

 "We might get close enough to talk with Saint Nick." On the ship 

 sped, its navigation equipment working well, then suddenly after 

 they had passed the eighty-fifth parallel and were approaching the 

 eighty-sixth, Anderson was told that both gyrocompasses had gone 

 crazy. Restarting a gyrocompass is a difficult and technical job. On 

 the other hand, to navigate with magnetic compasses in such high 

 latitudes might have started what Anderson calls "the dreaded game 

 of longitude roulette," and the ship might have traveled almost in 

 circles and then emerged against the wrong shore. None the less 

 they pushed on until they had passed lat. 87°N., farther north than 

 had ever been attained by a ship — even Nansen's Fram. At this 

 point Anderson decided to turn back to the edge of the ice to 

 avoid undue risk. 



The navigators, averaging out the constant to-and-fro swinging 

 of the magnetic compass, gradually pulled the ship around in what 

 they thought was the right direction. But soon they found that 

 they ^a^been victims of longitude roulette. Where the water should 

 be leading into deep, open seas, it was beginning to shallow. They 

 had almost run into the ice-logged coast of northern Greenland. A 

 day later they emerged from the pack and made contact with the 

 Trigger, that had been waiting for them. After one more short trip 

 to make an ascent into an open pool, the Nautilus left for a NATO 

 exercise. En route she clocked her sixty-thousandth submerged 

 mile — equal to Verne's twenty thousand leagues under the sea. 



While Nautilus was carrying out her operational and training 

 duties, a spectacular voyage across the Arctic Ocean under the ice 

 was being planned for her. The plan was for the Nautilus to start 

 the voyage in the Pacific, thread her way through the Bering 

 Strait, navigate under the Arctic ice and the Pole, and emerge in the 

 Atlantic. But the Nautilus got off to a bad start. First there was an 

 irritating salt water leak in one of the steam condensers, then fire 

 broke out in the engine room, forcing them to surface to clear the 

 smoke. After it was extinguished, Anderson thought of what could 

 have happened if Nautilus had been deep under the ice. 



On June 9, 1958, Nautilus sailed for the ice pack with her iden- 

 tifying numerals blocked out. Commander Anderson announced 

 to the crew: "All hands. This is the Captain speaking. Our desti- 

 nation for this trip is Portland, England, via the North Pole." 

 After navigating carefully through the treacherous waters of the 

 Aleutians, Nautilus passed through the Bering Sea and then through 



Dislance 

 Zulu r, 



On June 17, 1958, an hour before midnight 

 the nuclear submarine Nautilus had one 

 of her most narrow escapes beneath the 

 ice. Only 25 feet above her was the 

 bottom of a gigantic block of ice, while 

 only 20 feet below her was the ocean 

 floor. The chart shows the bottom profile 

 of ice beneath which the Nautilus passed 

 during a period of about 15 minutes. 

 Depth of water is shown in feet; distance 

 (horizontal scale) is shown in yards. 



Cross section of the Nautilus. 



after crews 

 quarters 



68 



