1974 CIA project to recover the sunken Soviet submarine K-129
Project Azorian
Hughes Glomar Explorer
Date
1974
Location
Over 16,000 feet (4,900 m) below the Pacific Ocean
Participants
CIA, Soviet Navy, U.S. Navy
Outcome
Successful recovery of a portion of Soviet submarine K-129
Project Azorian (also called "Jennifer" by the press after its Top Secret Security Compartment)[1] was a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) project to recover the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 from the Pacific Ocean floor in 1974 using the purpose-built ship Hughes Glomar Explorer.[2][3] The 1968 sinking of K-129 occurred about 1,600 miles (2,600 km) northwest of Hawaii.[4] Project Azorian was one of the most complex, expensive, and secretive intelligence operations of the Cold War at a cost of about $800 million, or $4.9 billion today.
The US designed the recovery ship and its lifting cradle using concepts developed with Global Marine (see Project Mohole) that used their precision stability equipment to keep the ship nearly stationary above the target while lowering nearly three miles (4.8 km) of pipe. They worked with scientists to develop methods for preserving paper that had been underwater for years in hopes of being able to recover and read the submarine's codebooks. The reasons that this project was undertaken included the recovery of an intact R-21 nuclear missile and cryptological documents and equipment.
The Soviet Union was unable to locate K-129, but the US knew where to look, based on data recorded by four Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC) sites and the Adak Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) array. The US identified an acoustic event on March 8 that likely originated from an explosion aboard the submarine. The US zeroed in on the location to within five nautical miles (5.8 mi; 9.3 km). The submarine USS Halibut located the boat using the Fish, a towed, 12-foot (3.7 m), two-short-ton (1.8 t) collection of cameras, strobe lights, and sonar that was built to withstand extreme depths. The recovery operation in international waters about six years later used mining for manganese nodules as its cover. The company was nominally owned by Howard Hughes, secretly backed by the CIA, who had paid for the construction of the Hughes Glomar Explorer.[5] The ship recovered a portion of K-129, but a mechanical failure in the grapple caused two-thirds of the recovered section to break off during recovery.
^Aid, Matthew; Burr, William; Blanton, Thomas (2010-02-12). "Project Azorian: The CIA's Declassified History of the Glomar Explorer". The National Security Archive. Retrieved 2010-02-13 – via GWU.
^Wiegley, Roger D., LT (JAG) USN "The Recovered Sunken Warship: Raising a Legal Question" United States Naval Institute Proceedings January 1979 p. 30.
^The secret on the ocean floor. David Shukman, BBC News. 19 February 2018.
^Cite error: The named reference StudiesIntell85 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Polmar, Norman; White, Michael (2010). Project Azorian: the CIA and the Raising of the K-129. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-690-2.
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