A radarscope view from inside the nuclear 

 submarine Skate (below) of the southern tip 

 of South America. This instrument, called 

 a plan position indicator, records an 

 instantaneous picture of the land within 

 a limited range. 



honestly expected, the shudder and jar of steel against solid ice. 

 The recording pen was so close to the reference line which indi- 

 cated the top of our sail [the superstructure] that they were, for 



what seemed Uke hours, almost one and the same In pure agony 



we stood rigidly at our stations. No man moved or spoke. Then 

 suddenly the pen, which had been virtually stationary, slowly 

 moved upward. The gap between the ice a.nd Nautilus was widening. 

 We had made it! We had cleared — by an incredible five feet — a 

 mass of ice big enough to supply a hundred-pound block to every 

 man, woman and child in the United States." 



Operation "Sunshine," as it was called, had failed. The way to 

 the Arctic Basin was blocked. Reluctantly Anderson announced to 

 the crew his decision to turn back; it came on his thirty-seventh 

 birthday. Painfully Nautilus set a course for Pearl Harbor and on 

 June 1 8 made a vertical ascent to transmit its report of failure for 

 relay to Washington. Anderson flew back to the Pentagon to 

 discuss the next stage in Operation "Sunshine." They decided to 

 make another attempt in July, but this time a thorough ice recon- 

 naissance survey was to be made with the aid of long-range Naval 

 aircraft based in Alaska. Meanwhile new equipment was installed 

 in the Nautilus. In addition to her inertial guidance navigation 

 system, a special closed-circuit television set was fitted so that a 

 constant visual picture of the ice could be given. More favorable 

 ice reports were now coming in, as was to be expected. It was 

 clearly an error to have tried so early in the year, as other explorers 

 such as Nansen had found. 



On July 23 Nautilus slipped into the deep water off Oahu and 

 headed north for Yunaska Pass in the Aleutians. Their daily news- 

 paper continued to amuse them, the movies were good, and Ufe 

 was generally comfortable on board. Commander Anderson wrote : 

 "Our reactor, the powerful source of energy that drove us, gave us 

 light, cooked for us, and shaved us, performed silently and majes- 

 tically. Watch-standers scanned networks of instruments, each of 

 which had a vital story to tell about how our magnificent ship was 

 performing. Ours was a world of supreme faith — faith in instru- 

 ments, faith in the laws of physics, faith in each other and in Him 

 who guided our destiny in the unknown seas ahead." 



On July 26 they reached the Aleutians, cautiously rose to peri- 

 scope depth to take bearings, then dived and penetrated into the 

 Bering Sea. That evening the North Pole Celebration Committee 

 met to discuss prizes for the best title for those who had been to 

 the North Pole submerged. On they drove into the Chukchi Sea 

 without difficulty except for an irritating short circuit. The Nautilus 

 had covered 2900 miles in six days at an average speed of 19.6 

 knots — a record run. By midnight of the twenty-ninth they began 

 to pick up scattered ice, then came the pack, which grew denser, 

 parts of it nearly coal black from the dirt it had picked up. Some 

 floes Anderson estimated to project 120 feet below the surface. 

 Cautiously he felt his way along "pinging for deep water" which 

 would lead them into the Barrow Sea Valley (off Point Barrow), 

 but each new and apparent opening was blocked. At one time, 

 when they were cruising along the surface, a man returning from 

 watch reported that it was raining up there. One member of the 

 expedition was surprised and said that rain was extremely rare in 

 the Arctic, which is, in fact, not quite true. Rain falls widely through- 



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