o flashed news of the accomplishment to the United States. A helicopter picked up Anderson at sea and flew him to Iceland for the first leg of the trip to Washington, D.C., where President Eisenhower decorated him with the Legion of Merit and gave his crew the first ever Presidential Unit Citation in a White House ceremony. Anderson lingered long enough for a packed press conference, then he flew the Atlantic again to rejoin the Nautilus before she docked in London.At the time, official comment made much of the commercial possibilities of trans-Polar travel, such as cargo submarines hauling goods from New York City to Japan. But the unstated message was clear. As Nautilus sonar supervisor Al Charette noted: "Knowing that we could operate it [Nautilus] safely under the ice, it was known that a Polaris submarine could operate safely under the ice. Without an equivalent submarine, there was no way [for the Soviets] to go in and find that guy ... So we could be right in their back yard and there was nothing they could do about it."
Caption: President Eisenhower may have looked dour at the August 8, 1958, press conference with Anderson, but he knew he had just sent a message to the Soviets that meant a lot more than a satellite. Life magazine archives.
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