1968 – across the world the year was marked by a marked rise of left-wing politics, anti-war sentiment, civil rights demonstrations and youth counterculture challenging the accepted norms of their elders. Ask most people what were the key events in 1968 they may say the chaos around the student protests in France, the Prague Spring and subsequent Soviet invasion, the Civil Rights movements in the US, the assassination of Martin Luther King, the growing hostility in the US and globally to the Vietnam War, the assassination of Robert Kennedy or maybe even Apollo 8 orbiting the Moon and returning safely to Earth. What a lot of people don’t know is that 1968 was the most dangerous year since the end of the second world war to be a Submariner.
In a short period of time in 1968 between January and May there were four mysterious submarine disappearances: the Israeli submarine INS Dakar, the French submarine Minerve, the Russian K-129 along with her missiles and their nuclear warheads and the American nuclear-powered submarine USS Scorpion.
As an aside – just how many nuclear reactors have been lost at sea? To date – that we know of – there have been 9 nuclear submarines lost at sea, 2 US and 7 Soviet/Russian ones. Most of these have reactors that are shielded and fingers crossed should be ok, however one Russian sub the K-27 had experimental reactors, was troublesome all its operational life and was actually scuttled by the Russians in the Kara Sea at a depth of only 33 metres as the cost of decommissioning was considered too expensive! During the Glasnost period in Russia a government report came out that stated that the Soviet Union had intentionally dumped six nuclear submarine reactors and ten nuclear reactors into the Kara Sea between 1965 and 1988. All those reactors under the waves are of course on top of the estimated 40 nuclear missiles lost at sea – we might revisit all that missing nuclear material in a future blog.
The most interesting of all these submarine losses in early 1968 is the loss of the K-129. This ultimately gave rise to Project Azorian the story of which reads like a mix of The Spy Who Loved Me and The Hunt for Red October. It’s a story so out there that even Hollywood hasn’t made it into a movie just yet!
Sinking of the K-129
The K-129 sank on 8 March 1968 along with her missiles and their nuclear warheads. The Soviet Navy thought her position was approximately 600 Nautical miles away from where she sank and began very obviously to search in the wrong place (There is a conspiracy theory that the KGB agents took the boat over to launch a first strike nuclear attack against Hawaii and try to blame it on the Chinese which explains why it was so far out of its intended position). The US Navy knew from their sonar observations of acoustic anomalies, to within a 5 nautical square mile area, where the K-129 sank. The wreck of K-129 was identified by USS Halibut northwest of Oahu at an approximate depth of 4,900 m (16,000 ft) in August 1968, it then took more than 20,000 closeup photos of every aspect of the K-129 wreck.
An Opportunity in Disaster
The fact the Soviets were looking in the wrong place was a stroke of good luck for the US. It presented them with a unique opportunity to recover Soviet nuclear missile and cryptography technology. The CIA examined the photos taken and concluded that there was a good chance one of the nuclear missiles was undamaged. In 1970 President Nixon authorised an attempted salvage and recovery operation, but instead of being a US Navy operation as you might normally expect, it was run by the CIA.
The breath of the ambition and planning in Project Azorian is incredible. The aim was to recover a major portion of the submarine, the key salvage targets were the cryptographic equipment, a nuclear warhead, a SS-N-5 missile, the navigation system, fire control system, sonar system, ASW countermeasures, and related documentation. This salvage operation was going to attempt to recover a submarine weighing 2700 tonnes from the seabed at a depth of 4900 metres. Oh, in total secrecy as well as if the Soviets realised what was actually happening it could quite easily have become a casus belli.
Link to the Mohole
Some of the technology used in Project Azorian has its beginnings in drilling attempts around what became known at the Mohole (and ultimately the NoHole when it was defunded). The Mohole was a 1960’s attempt to drill through the crust to the Mohorovičić Discontinuity and take a sample of the mantle. The US Mohole project decided to attempt to drill in the ocean as the crust is thinner under the ocean. Technology developed to support this effort in keeping ships and tools positioned exactly where there were meant to be was ultimately recycled, repurposed and improved on for Project Azorian.
Name a decent James Bond movie without a billionaire megalomaniac?
The CIA’s plans were nothing if not comprehensive and detailed. They approached Howard Hughes, whose companies had numerous defence contracts at the time. The CIA funded, via Hughes, a company called Global Marine Development Inc. a pioneer in deepwater offshore drilling operations. They were contracted to design and build a ship called the Hughes Glomar Explorer, the cost of which would be around $1.8 Billion in today’s money. The cover story was that Hughes had commissioned the ship to attempt to mine iron and manganese hydroxides from the ocean floor. In reality the ship was an incredibly specialised salvage vessel conceived with the express purpose of secretly salvaging the K-129, it was fitted out with a special lifting cradle and precision stability equipment whose sole purpose was to keep the ship stationary and in exactly the right place so the lifting cradle would concentrate on lifting 2700 tonnes of submarine the nearly 5 kilometres to the surface.
Contrary to a lot of speculation other than funnelling the finances to Global Maine Development, Howard Hughes had no involvement other than agreeing to allow his name, company, wealth and reputation for eccentricity to be used as part of an elaborate cover story. The Hughes Glomar Explorer was completed 4 years after the meeting when Nixon gave Project Azorian the green light.
The Recovery
This was a long term, expensive, complex, and covert intelligence operation, it required huge levels of cooperation and cost roughly $800 million at the time, which would translate into over $5 billion in today’s money.
The Hughes Glomar Explorer arrived at the recovery site on July 4, 1974, and conducted salvage operations for over a month. It was observed at least 2 by Soviet ships but they did not think the K-129 was in the location in question despite intelligence rumours an American recovery operation was imminent.
The public version, i.e. the officially sanctioned version that has been released says that the gripping / claw mechanism failed during the recovery and only the front of the submarine was actually recovered. The explanation given is that the claw was lifting in water that was close to freezing under immense pressure beyond the design constraints and the claw failed. The US Navy filmed funerals for the 6 Russian sailors’ bodies they recovered, they buried them at sea. The ceremony was conducted in Russian; the videos are available on YouTube.
It is interesting that the CIA was confident enough in the salvage and recovery technology to have staff on hand who knew the Russian Orthodox funeral rights. The US claims not to have recovered nuclear weapons and that this part of the sub was lost during the catastrophic failure during recovery.
But…………
Is the failure story just too convenient? The are persistent reports that the recovered section of K-129 included two nuclear missiles, the recovery of codebooks, sonar equipment and the ship’s bell strongly suggest that the failure wasn’t all that catastrophic.
Would the CIA be sneaky enough to raise the submarine to the surface, salvage what was of interest and the then lower the sub back into the water to then induce a failure of the lifting claw allowing the sub to sink back to the ocean floor where the Russians could find it? One imagines that the Russians have had a reasonably good look too at this juncture.
Success or Failure?
The CIA is in many ways associated with operational failures in the public consciousness the Bay of Pigs, Iran Contra, Operation Cyclone (funding the Afghan Mujahedeen) and domestic surveillance via their back doors into iPhones, Smart Cars and Smart TVs. However, there are a large number of very successful, in some cases scarcely believable success too.
You only have to look at the Canadian Caper (recuse of the US Hostages in Iran) or the success over many years of CAT Airlines/Air America. Ther CIA spearheaded the development satellite reconnaissance and also drove the development of the A-12/SR-71 Blackbird. These are the successes we know about, doubtless there are many more that have not come to light.
The concept, planning and timeframe of Project Azorian shows the CIA’s capabilities. It also shows that the CIA as an organisation had the ability to plan in the medium/long term for strategic goals. This project was incredibly detailed, involved meticulous preparation, adopted a strategic and comprehensive approach to long-term goals. Funding was allocated 5 years ahead of schedule, the bulk of the time involved the designing and building of a very specialised ship using cutting edge marine technology. A suitable cover story was manufactured and the right person and profile identified to provide plausible deniability. Given the planning that went into the project over a number of years it is impossible to believe that there was no post salvage scenario or plan. This begs the question was the CIA capable of recovering a sub and then subsequently faking a salvage failure, thereby allowing the sub to sink a second time to cover their tracks?
Every day of the week and twice on Sundays!