1969: The Navy Built A 145-Foot Nuclear Submarine That Drove On Wheels

Commissioned on 27 October 1969, NR-1 was the US Navy's smallest nuclear-powered submarine — 145 feet long, displacing just 400 tons submerged, with a 70-kilowatt pressurized-water reactor and a crew of thirteen. What set her apart was not the reactor. NR-1 carried two retractable wheels and a manipulator arm, which let her literally crawl along the seafloor at depths down to 3,000 feet. Over her thirty-nine-year service life she was used by the Navy and the CIA for some of the Cold War's strangest missions: recovering a sunken F-14 Tomcat with its Phoenix missile from nearly 2,000 feet, surveying the Mediterranean for opportunities to tap Soviet undersea communications cables as part of Operation Ivy Bells, and acting as Admiral Hyman Rickover's personal deep-ocean research platform. NR-1 was decommissioned in 2008.

Sources: US Naval History and Heritage Command — NR-1 ship history; Federation of American Scientists — NR-1 declassified profile; Lee Vyborny — Dark Waters: An Insider's Account of the NR-1 (NAL/Penguin, 2003)

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Видео 1969: The Navy Built A 145-Foot Nuclear Submarine That Drove On Wheels канала The Cold Bureau