Dennis Wilkinson remembers the pressure of a nation watching.

And just about everybody remembers Lola.

Forty years after then-Commander Wilkinson sent the signal "underway on nuclear power" and ordered the submarine USS NAUTILUS SSN-571 from its moorings, its crewmen have scattered.

But their memories of changing the way a nation thought of nuclear power, and the way the world thought of naval warfare, remain clear.

"We'd never seen anything like it and nobody else had," said Leroy Ingles, 78, of Port Orchard, Wash., who served as chief of the boat. "It was a different world altogether." The brainchild of then - Capt. Hyman G. Rickover, the NAUTILUS carried a $55 million price tag, handpicked 110-man crew and one of the world's first nuclear reactors.

Before the NAUTILUS, submarines in combat played waiting games underwater. Diesel engines needed air to run and charge batteries that quickly exhausted when a submarine submerged, even when traveling at relatively slow speeds.

When the Electric Boat-built NAUTILUS cast off Jan. 17, 1955, its only limitation was how much food could be stored aboard.

"Before, a submarine was just a vessel that could submerge and hide itself, but then was restricted to that spot," said Wilkinson, 76, a retired vice admiral who lives in Del Mar, Calif. "Now you had really unlimited range."

Three months after leaving its Thames River moorings in Connecticut, the NAUTILUS traveled 90 hours and 1,381 miles underwater to Puerto Rico, easily shattering previous records. The submarine could travel 30 mph while submerged, compared with the 18 mph of World War II-era submarines, and could dive more than 400 feet, according to records at the Nautilus Museum in Groton.

In 1955, the technological marvel didn't only bring accolades.

"People thought we were going to glow in the dark," said Wilson, 67, the submarine's steward, who lives in New London.

Crew members, though, said they didn't worry.

Every enlisted man went through about a month of courses in college-level physics and math in Pittsburgh, and then shipped out to Arco, Idaho to train on a working reactor similar to the one that would power the boat.

Sharing the name of Jules Verne's craft in "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," the submarine hit the water just eight years after Rickover conceived of it.

The Navy and the nation watched, and neither was disappointed.

During training exercises, the NAUTILUS evaded thousands of mock depth charges and dispatched its pursuers with ease, Wilkinson remembers.

In 1958, under William Anderson's command, the submarine became the first ship to cross the North Pole.

"It was a success for the Navy," said Ingles. "It was a success for the United States."

But the high performance of a submarine that could chase down opposing ships during exercises and then submerge out of sonar range brought envy as well as good-natured ribbing.

"In some ways the word sort of went out that there was a new element of warfare; that the present submarines were obsolete. In another sense, those are your compatriots, and they don't feel obsolete," Wilkinson said. "Every man's hand was turned against us."

When Admiral Rickover's submarine needed something, lore has it, the Navy scrambled.

On and off the submarine, crew members took to calling the NAUTILUS "Lola," after lines out of the musical "Damn Yankees."

"Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets," recited Wilson, a member of the submarine's alumni group who gathered in Groton in September to commemorate the 40th anniversary of its commissioning.

Despite the recognition heaped upon the NAUTILUS for its achievements, improvements on its hull design were under way as it hit the water, Lt. Cmdr. Bat Barton said.

Submarines became faster and more mobile.

The Los Angeles-class submarines that help make up the 99 nuclear submarines in the Navy's fleet have been clocked at speeds of 48 mph, according to Jane's Defense Weekly.

But, for the men of the NAUTILUS, there was no comparison.

Wilson in 1963 returned from other duties to the NAUTILUS, where he stayed until retiring from the Navy three years later. The NAUTILUS was towed to Groton from California in 1985 and converted into a museum that is visited by 250,000 people a year, Lt. Cmdr. Darrell Tworzyanski said.

Wilson frequently makes the trip from his New London home.

"There wasn't any other submarine as far as I was concerned," he said.

AP-DS-02-23-95 1601EST