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
Pole to Pole flying there on a small aeroplane fitted with skis. The North Pole scene was filmed in May 1992, after the rest of the series had been shot, as weather conditions were more suitable then as the ice was too fragile the previous year. From there, he heads to Greenland, then the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, where the towns of Ny Ålesund and Longyearbyen are located. From there he sails across the Barents Sea on a supply ship to the Norwegian port city of Tromsø, where he visits a statue of Roald Amundsen, the first man to reach the South Pole.