Henry Nardone remembers Jan. 21, 1954, as if it were yesterday.�The day started out being very damp and cold and overcast,� he recalled on Monday.Nardone remembers the dark coat he wore. He remembers the...

Henry Nardone remembers Jan. 21, 1954, as if it were yesterday.

�The day started out being very damp and cold and overcast,� he recalled on Monday.

Nardone remembers the dark coat he wore. He remembers the music playing.

He even remembers how he stood, with one foot propped up on a mooring cleat, his leg bent at the knee in a way that would make him stand out from the crowd in photos that were surely being taken that historic morning.

Nardone, now 91 and from Westerly, stood atop a Navy submarine that winter morning exactly 60 years ago as First Lady Mamie Eisenhower swung a bottle of champagne at its bow. The ship�s horn blew. Bells rang. And the Navy band played �Anchors Aweigh� as the Nautilus slipped down the ways at General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Conn., and the world�s first nuclear-powered submarine splashed into the Thames River.

�It was quite a thrill to ride that ship down,� Nardone recalled. �It picks up quite a bit of acceleration going down the ways.� He estimated the boat traveled at nearly 20 mph by the time it floated free. �We had tugs standing by in the water to make sure we didn�t go all the way across the river into New London.�

Nardone said that he appreciated the role that he was playing, along with other uniformed Navy and civilian Electric Boat shipbuilders, in the development of a historic ship. It called to mind the construction of the first steamship, more than a century earlier. �I was comparing it in my mind to such a revolutionary step,� said Nardone.

President Harry S. Truman, speaking at the keel-laying for Nautilus a year and a half before the launching, described the revolution embodied in the new ship.

�A few pounds of uranium will give her ample speed to travel thousands of miles at top speed,� Truman said. �She will be able to stay under water indefinitely. Her atomic engine will permit her to be completely free from the earth�s atmosphere. She will not even require a breathing tube to the surface.�

Before Nautilus, submarines ran on diesel engines, which required air to vent their exhaust and to provide oxygen so their fuel could burn. The diesel engines generated electricity that charged a mammoth bank of batteries, which allowed submarines to dive below the surface for brief periods of time. Before Nautilus, submarines spent most of their time on the surface or just below it, where snorkel tubes could reach fresh air.

Adm. Robert B. Carney, the Chief of Naval Operations, noted this technological turning point.

�As remarkable as this development seems to us now, Nautilus will probably appear to our sons and grandsons as a quaint old piece of machinery which introduced the transition to a new age of power,� Carney said in remarks at the launching. �This is sure to happen, for this is only the beginning. But I am proud to share this momentous beginning, and I believe that we are witnessing one of history�s great milestones.�

For the miracle that its nuclear reactor represented, Nautilus was, otherwise, a pretty ordinary submarine, according to Nardone.

�The actual physical construction of the ship wasn�t different from what we had been doing,� he said. �There was enough new stuff going on. We wanted to minimize the other things that ordinarily went into a submarine. The power plant was the thing that was new and revolutionary.�

Nardone had joined the Navy in 1943, the same year he finished engineering studies at Yale University. After World War II ended, he went into submarine construction at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The work drew heavily on captured German technology, he said.

Nardone went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for post-graduate studies, specializing in submarine propulsion. Then he was assigned to the Office of the Supervisor of Shipbuilding at Groton, orders that appealed to him because it stationed him near his hometown of Westerly.

He got there as work was beginning on the Nautilus. �I got there the week we laid the keel,� he said. �I was appointed as the project officer of that ship. That was my baby for three-and-a-half years.� He oversaw the design, construction and testing of Nautilus, making sure that the ship met Navy specifications and that the government got what it was paying for.

It took about a year after the launch for workers to finish building Nautilus. Nardone was aboard � in the engine room � when heat from the reactor generated steam that rotated the boat�s propeller. Nautilus sent a historic radio message, �Under way on nuclear power.�

After Nautilus completed its sea trials and left the shipyard for active duty, Nardone left the Navy at the rank of lieutenant.

Both would go on to important milestones.

On Aug. 3, 1958, Nautilus became the first ship to steam under the polar ice to the North Pole.

Although Nardone left the Navy, he didn�t leave the world of submarines. He took a job at Electric Boat, where he stayed for 37 years and served as director of the Trident program, which built the Ohio class of submarines to carry ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads.

Today, both are retired, not far from each other.

Nardone lives in Westerly.

Nautilus is moored in Groton at the Submarine Force Library and Museum, where the historic ship is open for free public tours.

For information on touring Nautilus, visit the library and museum�s website, www.ussnautilus.org.