The first submarine to travel under the North Pole was the USS Nautilus, a nuclear-powered sub from the United States. In 1958, it made history by becoming the first vessel to reach the geographic North Pole, traveling completely underwater. The journey was top-secret at the time and called "Operation Sunshine." After successfully navigating the icy waters, the Nautilus resurfaced in the Pacific Ocean. This mission proved submarines could operate in extreme conditions, even under the polar ice cap. The achievement was a major milestone in both naval history and Arctic exploration! Animation is created by Bright Side.
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FunTranscript
00:00This place has no time zone, no landmass, and the sun rises and sets here just once
00:05a year.
00:06For over 400 years, since the era of King Henry VIII, thousands of explorers from all
00:12over the world were trying to reach this elusive spot, the North Pole.
00:18Some were hoping to find a northwest or northeast passage to China and the Indies, and others
00:23just wanted to see what it was like.
00:25In 1773, the British Royal Navy organized the first scientific expedition to the North
00:31Pole.
00:32Constantine Phipps volunteered to lead the mission.
00:35It was difficult for the two ships to move through thick ice, and they had to be towed
00:39using smaller boats.
00:41At some point, Phipps was ready to leave the ships as they saw a completely frozen sea.
00:46But in the end, they broke free from the ice and escaped into the open sea to return home
00:51without reaching the goal.
00:54In 1882, American explorer James Booth Lockwood managed to get closer to the goal than anyone
01:00else.
01:01By that time, at least 750 people in 42 expeditions had lost their lives trying to make it to
01:08the pole.
01:11On the 7th of September, 1909, the New York Times came out with a sensational front page.
01:17Perry discovers the North Pole after 8 trials in 23 years.
01:22Robert E. Perry, an American explorer, claimed to have reached the North Pole in April of
01:27the same year.
01:28But communication back then was slower than now, so the message had only reached New York
01:33by September.
01:35A week before the famous headline, the New York Herald had published its own front page
01:39sensation.
01:40The North Pole is discovered by Dr. Frederick A. Cook.
01:44Cook, another American explorer, had vanished into the Arctic for over a year and had everyone
01:49convinced he reached the pole in April 1908, a whole year before Perry.
01:55It was tricky to provide evidence any of them had actually reached the goal back then.
02:00Their goal was constantly moving on sea ice, unlike the South Pole on steady land, so they
02:05couldn't just leave a flag or some other proof there.
02:08A travel diary full of details of the journey, including daily distances, the position of
02:13the stars, and the like, would probably do as evidence.
02:17But neither Cook nor Perry were able to provide any of this backup information.
02:22So each of them started a campaign to prove they were honest and trustworthy.
02:27Perry was mentioned as the North Pole discoverer until 1988.
02:31That's when the National Geographic Society revisited the evidence and found that his
02:36records really didn't prove his claim.
02:39Cook's claim was neither proven nor disproven.
02:43Australian-born British explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins went on his first expedition to the
02:49North Pole in 1913.
02:51That's when he got the idea to reach the goal by submarine.
02:55In 1931, he borrowed a special submarine named O-12 from the U.S. Navy.
03:01The future mission had two goals – to do scientific experiments while floating on ice
03:06and moving underwater, and to reach the North Pole by traveling beneath the ice.
03:11They planned to study the weather, take temperature measurements, and collect water samples from
03:15both the surface and the seafloor.
03:18The submarine Sir Hubert used was brought to a shipyard in New Jersey to be modified.
03:23They added the latest scientific equipment and changed the outside so the submarine could
03:27travel under the ice.
03:29On March 16th, the submarine left the shipyard to start its journey to the Brooklyn Navy
03:34Yard in New York.
03:36But even before leaving the Delaware River, they faced delays.
03:40A snowstorm forced them to stop at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and they had to stop again to get
03:45more fuel.
03:46When the submarine was entering New York Harbor, a crew member who was just 27 years old fell
03:52overboard and drowned.
03:54The submarine was officially renamed Nautilus, and the grandson of Jules Verne, the author
03:59of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which inspired the new name, was there to see it.
04:06Before starting their journey, the crew tested the Nautilus in different spots off the New
04:10England coast.
04:11They faced criticism and were already two months behind schedule, so they decided to
04:16head straight to England.
04:18During their trip across the Atlantic, they sailed into severe storms.
04:22On the 13th of June, the starboard engine broke down.
04:25Then, the port engine failed because it was overused.
04:29While crossing the Atlantic, Sir Hubert Wilkins kept radioing the submarine's position back
04:33to the United States.
04:35After both engines failed, they sent out an SOS.
04:39On June 15th, the USS Wyoming, a huge ship on a training cruise with naval students,
04:45reached the Nautilus.
04:46The Wyoming towed the broken submarine to Queenstown, Ireland, and then it was taken
04:51to Davenport, England for repairs.
04:53They had to wait for spare parts from the United States, which caused more delays.
04:58Once the Nautilus was fixed, they headed to Bergen, Norway to meet the submarine's science
05:03officers and get more equipment.
05:05One of the most important additions in Bergen was a diving chamber, which allowed them to
05:10lower scientific tools into the water through a special hatch.
05:15On August 5th, the Nautilus finally left Bergen and headed north to find ice flows.
05:21They had lots of delays because of mechanical problems and storms.
05:25One storm even made the submarine tilt at crazy angles.
05:29Finally, on August 19th, they saw the first ice flow.
05:33For a few days, they followed the ice's edge, looking for a good spot to dive.
05:38Three days later, they tried to dive under the ice, but discovered that the submarine's
05:43diving rudders were missing.
05:45One diver went overboard to check and saw that someone must have broken off the rudders
05:49on purpose.
05:50This made Wilkins think that someone on the crew had sabotaged the submarine because they
05:55didn't trust the mission.
05:57Even without the rudders, Wilkins still wanted to do some of his scientific experiments.
06:03On the last day of August, they found a way to force the Nautilus under a 3-foot-thick
06:07ice flow.
06:09They had to fill the ballast tanks and adjust the trim.
06:12They managed to make more dives under this ice this way before the journey ended.
06:17After a few more days of trying to do research, Wilkins decided it was too dangerous to stay
06:21at sea.
06:23The Nautilus arrived at Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago between mainland Norway and the
06:28North Pole, on September 8, after going through the worst storm of the trip.
06:33They planned to go to a port in England, but another storm caused a lot of damage and made
06:37the engines fail, so they had to stop in Bergen again.
06:42After getting permission from the United States shipping board, the Nautilus was towed out
06:46of Bergen and sunk in a Norwegian fjord on November 13, 1931.
06:53In 1958, a U.S. submarine with the same name, Nautilus, became the first vessel that reached
06:59the North Pole by traveling under the ice.
07:02This Nautilus was much bigger than the submarines that came before it.
07:06It was 319 feet long and weighed 3,590 tons.
07:11For comparison, the other Nautilus was 175 feet long.
07:15Unlike other submarines, the new Nautilus could stay underwater for a longer time because
07:20of its special atomic engine didn't need air and only used a tiny amount of nuclear
07:25fuel.
07:26On July 23, 1958, it left Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Operation Sunshine.
07:33There were 116 people on board – Commander Anderson, 111 officers and crew, and four
07:39civilian scientists.
07:41The Nautilus traveled north through the Bering Strait and only surfaced once at Point Barrow,
07:46Alaska.
07:47On August 1, the submarine left the north coast of Alaska and dove under the Arctic
07:52ice cap.
07:53The submarine traveled at a depth of 500 feet, with the ice above it between 10 to 50 feet
07:58thick.
07:59At 11.15 p.m. on August 3, Commander Anderson told his crew,
08:04"...for the world, our country, and the Navy, the North Pole."
08:09And the Nautilus went right under the North Pole without stopping.
08:13On August 5, the submarine came up in the Greenland Sea.
08:17And then, two days later, it finished its historic trip in Iceland.
08:21That's it for today!
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