The Submarine Salvage Edition

Colin here. In 1968, when US-Russian tensions were running high, a Soviet ballistic missile submarine went missing somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Immediately following the Cuban missile crisis, the US and Russian subs were armed with nuclear weapons and engaging in cat and mouse games underneath the surface. The Russian vessel was lost—rumored to have exploded—according to sounds picked up through American underwater sonar monitoring. After two months, the Russians gave up their search for the sunken vessel, abandoning it to the depths of the ocean floor.

The Glomar Explorer (Getty)

Why is this interesting?

In one of the most audacious engineering and clandestine moves in history, the CIA decided to photograph the wreck and retrieve the entire vessel from the ocean floor. The rationale was to get hands on the codebooks, observe the nuclear weapons, as well as understand the industrial engineering of the vessel. Another big task for the mission was to reverse engineer the Russian sonar in an effort to figure out ways for American subs to better evade them.

The agency concocted a cover story with the help of Howard Hughes. According to Smithsonian:

Wanting to sidestep diplomatic tensions and keep whatever knowledge was to be gleaned from the mission secret, the C.I.A. constructed an elaborate cover story with the help of enigmatic billionaire Howard Hughes. The aviation mogul lent his imprimatur to the construction of the 618-foot-long ship, to be named the Hughes Glomar Explorer, which was advertised as a deep-sea mining research vessel. In 1972, a champagne christening ceremony and fabricated press release celebrated the ship.

After a few head fakes, intentional location spoofs, fake “testing” in Bermuda, and a clandestine link-up off of Catalina island to install a robotic claw to remove the submarine from the ocean floor, the project set to work. Smithsonian continues:

According to Project AZORIAN: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129, a book co-written by naval historian Norman Polmar and documentary director Michael White, about midway through the process, a few of the grabber arms encircling the submarine broke, and a large part of the K-129 fell back to the ocean floor. While the later media reports and history books generally relayed that the more desirable components of the submarine, like the code room, sunk, Houghton encourages skepticism of the details surrounding the project’s ostensible failure.

And while the true fruits of the mission remain a bit murky, there are a few other notable facts: For one, the crew recovered several bodies from the Russian Sub, giving them a military burial at sea. They shared the film and details with Russia 20 years later. Also, the first use of the familiar phrase “we can neither confirm nor deny”—also called the Glomar response—was initially issued in the context of this mission. And, though there are countless examples of innovation and technology that have been applied in intelligence realms, this one can be surely marked down as one of the most ambitious, and outlandish. (CJN)

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Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN)

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