This article is more than 21 years oldObituary

Captain Edward Beach

This article is more than 21 years oldUS naval commander at the forefront of the nuclear age

Captain Edward "Ned" Beach, the US naval officer and historian who commanded the first circumnavigation of the globe by a nuclear submarine, has died of cancer aged 84. His bestselling novel, Run Silent, Run Deep, based on his experience of underwater warfare, was filmed in 1958, with Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster, though Beach never liked Hollywood's treatment of his story.

It was on February 16 1960 that Beach took the USS Triton, then the world's largest submarine, to sea from Groton, Connecticut. Eight days later, he began his round-the-world run in mid-Atlantic, near the equator off Brazil, and remained submerged for an unprecedented 84 days.

One reason for the voyage was to study the effects of prolonged submersion on the 176-man crew, who were accompanied by six scientific observers. This was of direct relevance to the US navy's plans for long deterrent patrols by nuclear submarines armed with Polaris missiles.

The Triton sailed westward round Cape Horn, crossed the Pacific and Indian oceans, passed south of the Cape of Good Hope and back into the Atlantic, returning to its starting point after sailing almost 31,000 miles in 61 days, at an average speed of nearly 21 knots - a record that still stands. When the boat surfaced off the Delaware coast on May 10, a navy helicopter flew Beach straight to the White House, where President Eisenhower awarded him the Legion of Merit.

Born in New York, Beach was named after his father, a distinguished naval officer who had fought in the Spanish-American and first world wars. Despite paternal discouragement, his son insisted on joining the navy, and finished second in the class of 1939 at the US naval institute at Annapolis, Maryland. Following service on a destroyer, he transferred to the rapidly expanding submarine arm, though only in reluctant obedience to orders. After the Japanese disabled the American battlefleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, submarines were, for months, the only force capable of taking the war into enemy waters.

A month after Pearl Harbor, Beach joined the submarine USS Trigger and began a remarkable wartime career that brought him 10 decorations. In June 1942, he took part in the crucial Battle of Midway, the turning point in the Pacific war, and was also involved in attacks that sank or damaged 45 Japanese ships. By the time his ship made a spectacular attack on the new Japanese aircraft carrier, the Hitaka, Beach had become its executive officer, or second-in-command.

Trigger had lurked submerged in Tokyo Bay for 30 days, awaiting its opportunity. Then, on June 10 1943, it fired six torpedoes, of which four hit the Hitaka; the ship was crippled and barely managed to return to port. Its destroyer escorts dropped depth-charges, forcing Trigger to dive to well below its design level, though it escaped unscathed.

In July 1944, Beach transferred, again as second-in-command, to the new submarine Tirante. He won the Navy Cross when the boat sank nine enemy merchant ships on its first patrol. Ironically, the posting saved his life; in March 1945, Tirante was ordered to rendezvous with Trigger in the East China Sea, but, in the meantime, Beach's old boat was sunk by enemy action.

Shortly before the end of the Pacific war, Beach got his first command, the submarine Piper. After 1945, his assignments included command of a new USS Trigger, and service as Eisenhower's naval aide, from 1953 to 1957.

By then, he had begun to write a memoir entitled Submarine! (1953), the first of his 13 books, four of them bestsellers. At the same time, he became an influential advocate of nuclear-powered boats, the first true submarines because they could stay submerged for so long, using their reactors to extract oxygen from seawater.

Beach's Washington service coincided with the astonishingly swift development of the first such submarine, the Nautilus, which surfaced at the North Pole in 1956 after approaching it under the Arctic ice-cap. His assignment to the Triton flowed naturally from this interest, though Beach modestly saw his great voyage as a matter of routine, made possible by technology and the dedication of his crew.

His navy career ended in 1966, after which he continued to write history and fiction. His proudest moment came last April, when the US naval institute named its new main building Beach House, in honour of him and his father.

Beach is survived by his wife Ingrid, two sons and a daughter.

· Edward 'Ned' Latimer Beach, Jr, naval officer and historian, born April 20 1918; died December 1 2002

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