The commanding officer, retired Vice Adm. Only about a quarter of the 19 are alive today. Nineteen crew members rode the vessel into the Thames that day, including Clare “Bill” Billing, 85, then a yeoman, who now lives in Gales Ferry, and Leslie Dorris Kelly, 90, a lieutenant then who now lives in Nashville, Tenn. Then a lieutenant, Nicholson went on to serve as the executive officer on Nautilus. “I’m very proud to have had the part that I had in the Nautilus and I’m proud of what Nautilus accomplished and I always will be,” said Nicholson, of La Jolla, Calif. John Nicholson, 89, said the launching was the “most exciting thing we’d ever done” since they had all joined the first crew. The men who served on Nautilus, who are now in their 80s and 90s, consider themselves lucky, both to have been selected over every other submariner who wanted that assignment, and to have arrived in Groton in time for the christening. In recent interviews, Nardone, who worked at the supervisor of shipbuilding office at EB, and members of the Nautilus’ first crew vividly recalled the excitement and promise of that day. Tuesday is the 60th anniversary of the day when more than 15,000 people gathered at the Groton shipyard to watch first lady Mamie Eisenhower break a bottle of champagne across the hull to christen the Nautilus, and to see the submarine that was destined to revolutionize naval warfare touch the water for the first time. Nardone, who was a young naval officer at the time, can be seen standing on the bow of the USS Nautilus in one of the famous pictures from that day. “I show everybody that picture and say, ‘That’s me,'” he said. When Electric Boat launched the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine into the Thames River 60 years ago, Henry Nardone stepped on a cleat on the deck so he would be the only one with a bent knee standing on the hull. “I figured that picture would be shown around the world, and I wanted to be able to identify myself to my grandchildren,” the 91-year-old resident of Westerly said.

Oldest nuclear submarine