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 Neil Armstrong (the first man to stand on the moon) landed at the North Pole in a small twin-engined ski plane. Hillary thus became the first man to stand at both poles and on the summit of Everest. In 1986 Will Steger, with seven teammates, became the first to be confirmed as reaching the Pole by dogsled and without resupply. USS "Gurnard" (SSN-662) operated in the Arctic Ocean under the polar ice cap from September to November 1984 in company with one of her sister ships, the attack submarine USS "Pintado" (SSN-672). On 12 November 1984 "Gurnard" and "Pintado" became