USS Nautilus: The Beginning of Rickover’s Nuclear Navy – Jules Verne’s 1870 novel 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea was more than prescient in predicting an underwater combat vessel powered by a futuristic and highly advanced propulsion system. The French novelist, poet, and playwright, writing as the Industrial Revolution was entering its peak phase in the US, had no idea of nuclear power. He predicted it, nonetheless.
The name of the submarine in Verne’s novel that was commanded by the famous literary character of Captain Nemo was the “Nautilus.” As if it were a Hollywood story inside of a Hollywood story, the Walt Disney film based on Verne’s novel is released three months before the real USS Nautilus (SSN-571) was commissioned at Groton, Connecticut (on 30 September 1954) with Commander Eugene P. Wilkinson as the boat’s first commander.
Nautilus was the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine. It was the beginning of what became known as “Rickover’s Navy.” This nuclear-powered submarine fleet represented the development of a new constituency within the US Navy. It was a new subculture of the Navy dedicated to the development of a nuclear propulsion plant that would be used onboard naval vessels.
The scientists and engineers who developed the sub all worked under then-Captain Hyman G. Rickover, the head of the Naval Reactors Branch of the Atomic Energy Commission. The Nautilus was his brainchild.
Birth of the Nuclear U.S. Navy
In 1946, Rickover and a group of other naval officials were working out of one of the US leading nuclear energy development centers at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. They were the nerve center of a project to develop nuclear energy for military and civilian use.
Their challenge was to assimilate all the available knowledge of nuclear power’s potential and to conceptualize how this latest innovation could be applied to the military difficulties of the post-WWII era. This technology, which the world then knew as “atomic energy,” they said would be harnessed by the US Navy to support now-Admiral Rickover’s quest for a nuclear navy.
At the time, there was a controversy about how the service could utilize this technology across its different “communities” wherever possible. In the immediate post-war era, the US Navy had planned to implement nuclear technology primarily onboard surface ships. This supposedly meant that nuclear-powered propulsion system technology would be monopolized for use onboard aircraft carriers.
The Silent Service and USS Nautilus
However, Rickover was an experienced submariner and believed the primary benefit to the Navy in using nuclear power would be onboard submarines—not just carriers. This meant a radical change in operational procedure due to the challenges and changing Cold War naval warfare scenarios.
During World War II, US Navy submarines primarily operated on the surface due to the diesel engine exhaust, making it impossible to run underwater for long periods. Generally, they submerged only before an attack or to evade an attack from enemy forces.
When submerged, submarines used battery-powered electric propulsion, which limited them to slow speeds, as well as the time that they could be submerged. This experience of the constrained time that the subs could actually be submerged inspired the development of a nuclear submarine force.
Rickover convinced the then-Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Chester Nimitz, that nuclear power would unleash the true potential of the submarine. The SSN platform would =stay submerged indefinitely and travel as fast when submerged as it could on the surface.
As a fellow submariner, Nimitz agreed with Rickover’s assessment. At this point, Rickover was authorized to begin working on a submarine reactor. The result was the USS Nautilus. But building and commissioning her was not the end of the story.
Following the official commissioning, the Nautilus was parked dockside for months to complete construction and testing. Only on 17 January 1955 was the boat launched under nuclear power. Subsequently, she was sent to sea trials for preliminary acceptance by the Navy.
The world’s first nuclear sub sailed south for a shakedown cruise on 10 May. The sub remained submerged while traveling 1,381 miles in 89.8 hours. This was the longest submerged cruise, to that date, by a submarine and at the highest sustained submerged speed ever for a period of more than one hour’s duration.
Nautilus‘s performance during this cruise was unprecedented for its time. The boat was “undetectable to surface ships, almost immune to air attacks, could overtake a surface force, and, in certain conditions, could evade a torpedo attack,” in the words of a historical essay on the development of the submarine.
The nuclear-powered USS Nautilus “impressed the officers so much that they believed a nuclear submarine was [now] worth more than many conventional submarines. The Nuclear Navy was born, and Rickover was its father.”
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is now an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments, and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
