World headlines came early in this program from several 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