Navy Electronics Laboratory events—the submerged voyage of USS "Nautilus" from the Pacific to the Atlantic, via the North Pole, in 1958, with NEL’s Dr. Waldo Lyon aboard as chief scientist and ice pilot. That same summer, the USS "Skate" cruised from the Atlantic to the North Pole and the central Arctic Ocean, surfacing 9 times through small holes in the ice cap. Dr. Eugene C. La Fond, head of NEL's Oceanography Branch, was chief scientist In March 1959, the "Skate" returned to the Arctic, under winter conditions, with Dr. Waldo Lyon as chief scientist, and for the first time, the nuclear submarine was
North Pole 1928, in the airship "Italia". The "Italia" crashed on its return from the Pole, with the loss of half the crew. In May 1937 the world's first North Pole ice station, North Pole-1, was established by Soviet scientists by air 20 kilometres (13 mi) from the North Pole. The expedition members: oceanographer Pyotr Shirshov, meteorologist Yevgeny Fyodorov, radio operator Ernst Krenkel, and the leader Ivan Papanin conducted scientific research at the station for the next nine months. By 19 February 1938, when the group was picked up by the ice breakers "Taimyr" and "Murman", their station had drifted 2850 km