Climate of the Arctic continuously, with 30 stations in the Arctic from 1950 to 1991. These stations collected data that are valuable to this day for understanding the climate of the Arctic Basin. shows the location of Arctic research facilities during the mid-1970s and the tracks of drifting stations between 1958 and 1975. Another benefit from the Cold War was the acquisition of observations from United States and Soviet naval voyages into the Arctic. In 1958 an American nuclear submarine, the "Nautilus" was the first ship to reach the North Pole. In the decades that followed submarines regularly roamed under the Arctic sea ice,
Skipjack-class submarine planes were moved to the massive sail to cut down on flow-induced noise near the bow sonar arrays. They were known as sail planes or fairwater planes. The "Skipjack"s were the first class built with sail planes; they were later backfitted on the "Barbel"s. This design feature would be repeated on all U.S. nuclear submarines until the improved , the first of which was launched in 1988. The small "turtleback" behind the sail was the exhaust piping of the auxiliary diesel generator. The "Skipjack"s also introduced the S5W reactor to U.S. nuclear submarines. It was known as ASFR (Advanced Submarine