On March 17, 1959, USS Skate (SSN 578) became the first submarine to surface at the North Pole, traveling 3,000 miles in and under Arctic ice for more than a month.
Considered small by even WWII fleet boat standards, the 267-foot long Skate was a slow boat, capable of only 18-knots on her early S3W reactor. That didn’t stop her from making history. Commissioned 23 December 1957 she spent extensive amounts of her career in the polar regions.
Skate and Seadragon, one from the Atlantic Fleet, the other from the Pacific, repeated the surfacing in 1962.
Besides her famous surfacing at the Pole, in 1962 she rendezvoused with sistership USS Seadragon (SSN-584) at the same location and remained active until 1986.
