Under the North Pole from the Pacific to the Atlantic

On April 25, 1958, the Nautilus began her second trip to the West Coast of the United States. Her return trip to the Atlantic would not take her through the Panama Canal, but under the polar ice cap instead. On June 9, she left San Francisco for New London to begin her mission, but was stopped by deep draft ice in the Chukchi Sea on June 19. She made her way to Pearl Harbor to await better conditions, and started a second attempt on July 23. On Aug. 1, she submerged in the Barrow Sea Valley and, at 11:15 p.m. on Aug. 3, 1958, became the first watercraft to reach the geographic North Pole. She would travel another four days under the ice before surfacing northeast of Greenland. She would end her voyage at the Isle of Portland, England. In recognition of her historic feat, the Nautilus received the first peacetime Presidential Unit Citation.


This info is from www.mesotheliomaweb.org/mesothelioma/.../submarines/uss-nautilus