Project Azorian

The K-129 submarine

In April 1968, Soviet Pacific Fleet surface and air assets were observed conducting a surge deployment to the North Pacific Ocean that involved some unusual search operations. The activity was evaluated by the United States Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) as a possible reaction to the loss of a Soviet submarine. Soviet surface ship searches were centered on a location known to be associated with Soviet Golf II-class strategic ballistic missile (SSB) diesel submarine patrol routes. These submarines carried three nuclear missiles in an extended sail/conning tower, and routinely deployed within missile range of the US west coast. After weeks of searching, the Soviets were unable to locate the sunken boat, and Soviet Pacific Fleet operations gradually returned to normal.

The American SOSUS hydrophone network in the northern Pacific was tasked with reviewing its recordings in the hope of detecting an implosion (or explosion) related to such a loss. The Navy analyzed acoustic data from four AFTAC sites and the Adak, Alaska SOSUS array,[6] locating the wreck of the submarine to within 5 nautical miles (9 km). The site was hundreds of miles away from the Soviet Navy search area.[7]

Naval Facility (NAVFAC) Point Sur, south of Monterey, California, was able to isolate a sonic signature on its low-frequency array recordings of an implosion event that had occurred on March 8, 1968. Using NavFac Point Sur's date and time of the event, NavFac Adak and the US West Coast NAVFAC were also able to isolate the acoustic event. With five SOSUS lines-of-bearing, Naval Intelligence was able to localize the site of the K-129 wreck to the vicinity of 40.1° N latitude and 179.9° E longitude (close to the International Date Line).[8]

In July 1968, the United States Navy initiated "Operation Sand Dollar" with the deployment of USS Halibut from Pearl Harbor to the wreck site. Sand Dollar's objective was to find and photograph K-129. In 1968 Halibut, which had been configured to use deep submergence search equipment, was the only such specially-equipped submarine then in US inventory. Halibut located the wreck after three weeks of visual search using robotic remote-controlled cameras. (It took almost five months of search to find the wreck of the US nuclear-powered submarine Scorpion in the Atlantic, also in 1968). Halibut is reported to have spent the next several weeks taking over 20,000 closeup photos of every aspect of the K-129 wreck, a feat for which Halibut received a special classified Presidential Unit Citation signed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968.

In 1970, based upon this photography, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and Henry Kissinger, then National Security Advisor, proposed a clandestine plan to recover the wreckage so that the US could study Soviet nuclear missile technology, as well as possibly recover cryptographic materials. The proposal was accepted by President Richard Nixon and the CIA was tasked to attempt the recovery.

Global Marine Development Inc., the research and development arm of Global Marine Inc., a pioneer in deepwater offshore drilling operations, was contracted to design, build and operate Hughes Glomar Explorer to secretly salvage the sunken Soviet submarine. The ship was built at the Sun Shipbuilding yard near Philadelphia. Billionaire businessman Howard Hughes – whose companies were already contractors on numerous classified US military weapons, aircraft and satellite contracts – agreed to lend his name to the project to support the cover story that the ship was mining manganese nodules from the ocean floor, but Hughes and his companies had no actual involvement in the project. K-129 was photographed at a depth of over 16,000 feet (4,900 m), and thus the salvage operation would be well beyond the depth of any ship salvage operation ever attempted. On November 1, 1972, work began on the 63,000-short-ton (57,000 t), 619-foot-long (189 m) Hughes Glomar Explorer (HGE).

The recovery site of К-129 based on the intersection of three circles marking the distances to Long Beach, CA, Pearl Harbor, HI, and Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka.

Hughes Glomar Explorer employed a large mechanical claw, which Lockheed officially titled the "Capture Vehicle" but affectionately called Clementine. The capture vehicle was designed to be lowered to the ocean floor, grasp the targeted submarine section, and then lift that section into the ship's hold. One requirement of this technology was to keep the floating base stable and in position over a fixed point 16,000 feet (4,900 m) below the ocean surface.

The capture vehicle was lowered and raised on a pipe string similar to those used on oil drilling rigs. Section by section, pairs of 30-foot (9.1 m) steel pipes were strung together to lower the claw through a hole in the middle of the ship. This configuration was designed by Western Gear Corp. of Everett, Washington. Upon a successful capture by the claw, the lift reversed the process – 60-foot (18 m) pairs drawn up and removed one at a time. The salvaged "Target Object" was thus to be drawn into a moon pool, the doors of which could then be closed to form a floor for the salvaged section. This allowed for the entire salvage process to take place underwater, away from the view of other ships, aircraft, or spy satellites.

Sailing 3,008 nautical miles (5,571 km) from Long Beach, California, on June 20, 1974, Hughes Glomar Explorer arrived at the recovery site July 4 and conducted salvage operations for over a month. During this period, at least two Soviet Navy ships visited Hughes Glomar Explorer's work site, the oceangoing tugboat SB-10, and the Soviet missile range instrumentation ship Chazma.[4] It was found out after 1991 that the Soviets were tipped off about the operation and were aware that the CIA was planning some kind of salvage operation, but the military command believed it impossible that they could perform such a task and disregarded further intelligence warnings. Later, Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin started sending urgent messages back to the Soviet Navy warning that an operation was imminent. Soviet military engineering experts reevaluated their positions and claimed that it was indeed possible (though highly unlikely) to recover K-129, and ships in the area were ordered to report any unusual activity, although the lack of knowledge as to where K-129 was located impeded their ability to stop any salvage operation.[8]

US Army Major General Roland Lajoie stated that, according to a briefing he received by the CIA during recovery operations, Clementine suffered a catastrophic failure, causing two-thirds of the already raised portion of K-129 to sink back to the ocean floor. Former Lockheed and Hughes Global Marine employees who worked on the operation have stated that several of the "claws" intended to grab the submarine fractured, possibly because they were manufactured from maraging steel, which is very strong, but not very ductile compared with other kinds of steel.

The recovered section included two nuclear torpedoes, and thus Project Azorian was not a complete failure. The bodies of six crewmen were also recovered, and were given a memorial service and with military honors, buried at sea in a metal casket because of radioactivity concerns. Other crew members have reported that code books and other materials of apparent interest to CIA employees aboard the vessel were recovered, and images of inventory printouts exhibited in the documentary[8] suggest that various submarine components, such as hatch covers, instruments and sonar equipment were also recovered. White's documentary also states that the ship's bell from K-129 was recovered, and was subsequently returned to the Soviet Union as part of a diplomatic effort. The CIA considered the project one of the greatest intelligence coups of the Cold War.[10]

The entire salvage operation was recorded by a CIA documentary film crew, but this film remains classified. A short portion of the film, showing the recovery and subsequent burial at sea of the six bodies recovered in the forward section of K-129, was given to the Russian government in 1992.

Time magazine[27] and a court filing by Felice D. Cohen and Morton H. Halperin on behalf of the Military Audit Project [28] suggest that the alleged project goal of raising a Soviet submarine might itself have been a cover story for another secret mission. Tapping undersea communication cables, the cover up of an assassination, the installation of a missile silo, and installation and repair of surveillance systems to monitor ship and submarine movements are listed as possibilities for the actual purpose of such a secret mission.[29]

W. Craig Reed told an inside account of Project Azorian in his book Red November: Inside the Secret U.S. – Soviet Submarine War (2010). The account was provided by Joe Houston, the senior engineer who designed leading-edge camera systems used by the Hughes Glomar Explorer team to photograph K-129 on the ocean floor. The team needed pictures that offered precise measurements to design the grappling arm and other systems used to bring the sunken submarine up from the bottom. Houston worked for the mysterious "Mr. P" (John Parangosky) who worked for CIA Deputy Director Carl E. Duckett, the two leaders of Project Azorian. Duckett later worked with Houston at another company, and intimated that the CIA may have recovered much more from the K-129 than admitted publicly. Reed also details how the deep submergence towed sonar array[30] technology was used for subsequent Operation Ivy Bells missions to wiretap underwater Soviet communications cables.

The documentary film Azorian: The Raising Of The K-129 was produced by Michael White and released in 2009. It features interviews with Sherman Wetmore, Global Marine heavy lift operations manager; Charlie Johnson, Global Marine heavy lift engineer; and Raymond Feldman, Lockheed Ocean Systems senior staff engineer. They were the three principals in the design of the Hughes Glomar Explorer heavy lift system and the Lockheed capture vehicle (CV or claw). They were also on board the ship during the mission and were intimately involved with the recovery operation. They confirmed that only 38 ft (12 m) of the bow was eventually recovered. The intent was to recover the forward two thirds (138 ft [42 m]) of K-129, which had broken off from the rear section of the submarine and was designated the Target Object (TO). The capture vehicle successfully lifted the TO from the ocean floor, but a failure of part of the capture vehicle on the way up caused the loss of 100 ft (30 m) of the TO, including the sail. Norman Polmar and Michael White published Project Azorian: The CIA And The Raising of the K-129 in 2010. The book contains additional documentary evidence about the effort to locate the submarine and the recovery operation.[8]

A number of artifacts from Project Azorian and Glomar Explorer are on display at the CIA Museum. The museum has shared declassified images and video featuring the artifacts through its website; however the physical grounds of the museum are on the compound of the George Bush Center for Intelligence and thus physically inaccessible to the public.

• 
  Sherman Wetmore, lead engineer on the Glomar Explorer, looking at an oil painting of the ship raising the Soviet submarine.
• 
  Sherman Wetmore poses next to a collection of Project AZORIAN artifacts on display.
• 
  One of the manganese nodules that Glomar recovered from the Pacific, now encased in lucite.
• 
  Hughes Glomar / Summa Corporation crew patch
• A video discussing the Glomar Explorer, produced as part of the CIA Debrief series on YouTube

• HMS L55, a British submarine sunk in 1919 and raised by the Soviets in 1928
• HMS Poseidon, a British submarine sunk in 1931 and secretly raised by China in 1972
• Hughes Mining Barge, a submersible barge designed to keep the Glomar Explorer's true nature secret
• The Jennifer Morgue novel by Charles Stross, uses the K-129 scenario as a basis for supernatural horror.
• Three Miles Down novel by Harry Turtledove, based on Project Azorian.
• List of sunken nuclear submarines

Notes

Bibliography

• Craven, John (2001). "The Hunt for Red September: A Tale of Two Submarines". The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 198–222. ISBN 0-684-87213-7.
• Dunham, Roger C. (1996) Spy Sub – Top Secret Mission To The Bottom Of The Pacific New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-451-40797-0
• Reed, W. Craig (2010) Red November: Inside the Secret U.S.–Soviet Submarine War New York: William Morrow. ISBN 978-0-06-180676-6
• Polmar, Norman and White, Michael (2010) Project Azorian: The CIA And The Raising of the K-129, Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-690-2
• Presidential Unit Citation – USS Halibut – 1968
• Sharp, David (2012). The CIA's Greatest Covert Operation: Inside the Daring Mission to Recover a Nuclear-Armed Soviet Sub. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. p. 344. ISBN 978-0-7006-1834-7. Archived from the original on 2012-07-28.
• Sontag, Sherry (1998). Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage. New York: Harper. ISBN 0-06-103004-X.
• Varner, Roy and Collier, Wayne. (1978) A Matter of Risk: The Incredible Inside Story of the CIA's Hughes Glomar Explorer Mission to Raise a Russian Submarine

• Dean, Josh (2018). The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History. Dutton Caliber. ISBN 978-1101984451.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Project Azorian.

• Azorian – The Raising of the K-129 / 2009 – Two Part TV Documentary / Michael White Films Vienna
• Project Jennifer and the Hughes Glomar Explorer
• Extensive bibliography
• Personal account by a Lockheed Engineer of the K-129 salvage effort while aboard Glomar Explorer Amazon review by Ray Feldman
• Red November, Inside the Secret U.S. Soviet Submarine War