American Valor Quarterly Issue 4 - Autumn 2008 | Page 17

we were proceeding farther north than any other
ship in history had ventured under its own power.

President Eisenhower pins the Legion of Merit on the lapel of Captain Anderson at a
press conference announcing the successful completion of Operation Sunshine and the
Nautilus’s trek from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the North Pole.

As we grew nearer to the Pole, the navigation party
scrutinized their data almost continually,
recommending small course changes to send us
directly across that specific point on the globe. After
so many weeks of frustration and so many miles
of steaming, I am not sure any of us could have
handled finding out later that we missed the Pole –
even by a mile or two. We watched our instruments
very closely. Shep told me years later that he did
every calculation twice to make sure no mistakes
were made.

Frank Adams and I spent our time either at the
conning station in the attack center or at the base of the grand
staircase in the control room. That was where the navigator and
quartermasters did their work and the ship control party
maintained course, speed, depth, and angle on the boat. From
these spots, Frank and I were able to keep an eye on the nerve
centers of the ship and remain within arm’s reach of Lyon’s
Tempted as I might have been to authorize it, I knew it was out overhead sounders located at the top of the grand staircase.
of the question. This was no time for stunts. I did not want to
delay the completion of our true mission, the full transit from the I was primarily interested in navigational accuracy, something so
Pacific to the Atlantic through the no longer mythical Northwest difficult to attain and maintain in the high latitude regions where
Passage. Man had waited centuries for such a feat. I did not want
to take any longer than was necessary to get it accomplished.
Someone suggested that when we reached the North Pole, we
put the rudder hard over and make twenty-five tight circles, like
some kind of nuclear propelled carousel. That would make
Nautilus the first ship to circle the earth twenty-five times. It was a
dizzying thought!

The North Pole. Latitude: ninety degrees north. Longitude: you
name it! Anything from zero to 180 degrees, east or west.
Down through the centuries, writers and explorers have painted
it as the point of ultimate difficulty and mystery. Actually it is a
point of ultimate truth. For example, as an axis point of the
earth’s rotation, does it stay fixed in location, always pointing to
the same point in space, or does it wander like the magnetic pole
does? The answer appears to be that it wanders. The amazing
thing is that it deviates so little. By some estimates, its meandering
draws an irregular circle less than twenty-five feet across.
If the A