History of submarines few years before the US, and paralleled subsequent US development in this area. In the 1950s, nuclear power partially replaced diesel-electric propulsion. The sailing of the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USN ""Nautilus"" in 1955 was soon followed by similar British, French and Russian boats. Equipment was also developed to extract oxygen from sea water. These two innovations, together with inertial navigation systems, gave submarines the ability to remain submerged for weeks or months, and enabled previously impossible voyages such as the crossing of the North Pole beneath the Arctic ice cap by the USS "Nautilus" in 1958. Most of the
North Pole-1 North Pole-1 North Pole-1 () was the first Soviet manned drifting station in the Arctic Ocean, primarily used for research. North Pole-1 was established on 21 May 1937 and officially opened on 6 June, some from the North Pole by the expedition into the high latitudes Sever-1, led by Otto Schmidt. The expedition had been airlifted by aviation units under the command of Mark Shevelev. "NP-1" operated for 9 months, during which the ice floe travelled . The commander of the station was Ivan Papanin. On 19 February 1938 the Soviet ice breakers "Taimyr" and "Murman" took four polar explorers