Soviet submarine K-129 (1960)

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

The wreck of K-129 was identified by USS Halibut northwest of Oahu at an approximate depth of 4,900 m (16,000 ft) on 20 August 1968.[8] It was surveyed in detail over the next three weeks by Halibut – reportedly with over 20,000 close-up photos, and later also possibly by the bathyscaphe Trieste II. The location of the wreck remains an official secret of the United States intelligence services. John P. Craven, though, points to a location nearly 40°N, and almost exactly on the 180th meridian.

Hughes Glomar Explorer traveled 3,008 miles from Long Beach, California, to reach the recovery site.[3]^: 37 CIA documents reveal that she sank "1,560 miles northwest of Hawaii". The International Atomic Energy Agency states that two nuclear warheads from K-129 were located in the Pacific 1,230 miles from Kamchatka at coordinates 40°6'N and 179°57'E at a depth of 6,000 metres (20,000 ft), and lists them as recovered.[9][10] All three distances point to a location of 38°5′N 178°57′E, which is close to 600 nautical miles (1,100 km) north of the Midway Atoll. The CIA gives 5,010 and 5,030 metres (16,440 and 16,500 ft) for its approximate depth.[3]

Given a unique opportunity to recover a Soviet SS-N-5 Serb nuclear missile without the knowledge of the Soviet Union, President Richard Nixon authorized a salvage attempt after consideration by the Secretary of Defense and the White House. To ensure the salvage attempt remained "black" (i.e., secret), the CIA, rather than the Navy, was asked to conduct the operation. Hughes Glomar Explorer was designed and built under CIA contract solely for the clandestine salvage of K-129. The cover story was that the ship would be mining manganese nodules on the sea floor. The salvage operation, named Project Azorian, was one of the most expensive and deepest secrets of the Cold War.

According to one account, in July–August 1974, Hughes Glomar Explorer grappled with and was able to lift the forward half of the wreck of K-129, but as it was being raised, the claw suffered a critical failure, resulting in the forward section breaking into two pieces with the all-important sail area and center section falling back to the ocean floor. Thus, the center sail area and the after portions of K-129 were allegedly not recovered. What exactly was retrieved in the section that was recovered is classified Secret Noforn or Top Secret, but the Soviets assumed that the United States recovered torpedoes with nuclear warheads, operations manuals, code books, and coding machines. Another source (unofficial) states that the U.S. recovered the bow area, which contained two nuclear torpedoes,[11]^: 111 but no cryptographic equipment nor code books.[12]

Seymour Hersh of The New York Times uncovered some of the details of Project Azorian in 1974, but was kept from publication by the action of the Director of Central Intelligence, William Colby. Months after the salvage operation was completed, in February 1975, the Los Angeles Times ran a brief story regarding the CIA operation, which led The New York Times to release Hersh's story. Jack Anderson continued the story on national television in March 1975.[3] The media called the operation Project Jennifer, which in 2010 was revealed to be incorrect, since Jennifer referred only to a security system that compartmentalized Azorian project data.[3]

According to a report released by the US Navy, the pressure-hull of the 40-foot bow-section was intact forward of the break-point, but had been subject to massive internal destruction.[6]

The United States announced that in the section they recovered were the bodies of six men.[13] Due to radioactive contamination, the bodies were buried at sea in a steel chamber in September 1974, with full military honors about 90 nautical miles (167 km) southwest of Hawaii.[11] The videotape of that ceremony[14] was given to Russia by U.S. Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates when he visited Moscow in October 1992.[11]^: 359 The relatives of the crew members were eventually shown the video some years later.

The K-129 recovery has been stated to have been a failure, recovering only a small amount of insignificant parts of the submarine. The CIA argued in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, however, that the project had to be kept secret because any "official acknowledgment of involvement by U.S. government agencies would disclose the nature and purpose of the program."[15] This response has entered the lexicon of legal jargon as "the Glomar response" or "glomarization" - "neither confirm nor deny".

As of 2018, the files, photographs, videotapes, and other documentary evidence remained closed to the public. A few pictures appeared in a 2010 documentary showing the K-129 wreck - the bow and the sail, with the missile compartment heavily damaged showing only one missile tube left attached to the structure.

Lead–acid batteries release explosive hydrogen gas while charging. The hydrogen gas, if not properly vented, could have accumulated into an explosive concentration.

John Craven, former chief scientist of the U.S. Navy's Special Projects Office and former head of the DSSP and DSRV programs, commented:

I have never seen or heard of a submarine disaster that was not accompanied by the notion that the battery blew up and started it all. [...] Naive investigators, examining the damage in salvaged battery compartments, invariably blame the sinking on battery explosions until they learn that any fully charged battery suddenly exposed to seawater will explode. It is an inevitable effect of a sinking and almost never a cause.[7]^: 215

At least one American submarine, USS Cochino, though, was lost off Norway in 1949 due to a hydrogen explosion in the battery compartment. Most of Cochino's crew was rescued and the cause of her sinking is therefore known.[18]

Deck Log Book USS Swordfish from March 1968, stating that she had been on "Special Operations" from March 1 to 17, 1968

Standard practice during the Cold War was for U.S. Navy attack submarines to trail Soviet missile submarines as they departed their home ports and moved into the North Pacific or the North Atlantic Oceans.[19]

The collision hypothesis is the unofficial opinion of many Soviet Navy officers,[20] and is officially denied by the U.S. Navy. According to U.S. Navy sources, USS Swordfish put into Yokosuka, Japan, on 17 March 1968, shortly after the disappearance of K-129, and received emergency repairs to a bent periscope, reportedly caused by ice impacted during surfacing while conducting classified operations in the Sea of Japan. The USS Pueblo seizure by the North Korean government occurred in the Sea of Japan on 23 January 1968, and the U.S. Navy response to this incident included the deployment and maintenance of naval assets in the area off the eastern North Korean coast for some time thereafter.

In response to Russian efforts to ascertain whether K-129 had been lost due to damage resulting from a collision with a U.S. submarine, an official U.S. statement by Ambassador Malcolm Toon to a Russian delegation during a meeting in the Kremlin in August 1993 related:

At my request, U.S. naval intelligence searched the logs of all U.S. subs that were active in 1968. As a result, our Director of Naval Intelligence has concluded that no U.S. sub was within 300 nautical miles (560 km) of your sub when it sank.[21]^: 262

A news release in 2000 demonstrates that Russian suspicion and sensitivity concerning the collision possibility, and indeed their preference for such an explanation, remains active:

As recently as 1999, Russian government officials complained that Washington was covering up its involvement. One accused the Americans of acting like a "criminal that had been caught and now claimed that guilt must be proved," according to the notes of a U.S. participant in a November 1999 meeting on the topic.[22]

On 3 October 1986, the Soviet Project 667A ballistic-missile submarine K-219, while on combat patrol in the Atlantic, suffered the explosion of a liquid-fueled R-27 missile in one of its 16 missile tubes. The cause of the explosion was a leaking missile tube hatch seal. The leak allowed sea water to come into contact with residue of the missile's propellants, which caused a spontaneous fire, resulting in an explosion first of the missile booster, then a subsequent explosion of the warhead detonator charge. In the case of the Project 667A, the missiles were located within the pressure hull, and the explosion did not cause damage sufficient to immediately sink the boat. It did, however, cause extensive radioactive contamination throughout, requiring the submarine to surface and the evacuation of the crew to the weather deck, and later to a rescue vessel, which had responded to the emergency. Subsequently, K-219 sank into the Hatteras Abyss with the loss of four crewmen, and rests at a depth around 5,500 m (18,000 ft). The Soviet Navy later claimed that the leak was caused by a collision with USS Augusta.

Some indicators suggest K-129 suffered a similar explosion in 1968. First, the radioactive contamination by weapons-grade plutonium of both the recovered bow section and the six crewmen of K-129 indicates the explosion of the warhead detonator charge of one of the missiles, before the ship reached its crush depth. The report that the forward section was crushed and that charring in the bow section indicated dieseling from an implosion (or alternatively from a fire), would indicate that the explosion occurred while K-129 was submerged and at depth. The report found in Blind Man's Bluff that the wreck revealed K-129 with a 3 m (10 ft) hole immediately abaft the conning tower would support the theory of an explosion of one of the three missiles in the sail (possibly missile number 3). Since K-129's missiles were housed in the sail, much less structural mass (compared to the K-219) was available to contain such an explosion, and loss of depth control of the submarine would be instantaneous.

A photograph taken by the cameras on the capture vehicle, though, as published in the White and Polmar book, shows extensive sail damage with two missile tubes obliterated, and the target for recovery was the forward 135-ft section of the sail. The wreck was in two major pieces on the ocean bottom.

According to Craven, K-129 crossed the International Date Line at 40°N, which was much further south of her expected patrol station:

When K-129 passed longitude 180, it should have been farther north, at a latitude of 45°, or more than 300 miles away. If that was a navigational mistake, it would be an error of historic proportions. Thus, if the sub were not somewhere in the vicinity of where the Soviets supposed it to be, there would be a high probability, if not a certainty, that the submarine was a rogue, off on its own, in grave disobedience of its orders.[7]^: 206

Craven does not explain why he eliminated the possibilities that K-129 was proceeding to a newly assigned and officially approved patrol area, or using a new track to an established patrol area, nor why he concluded that K-129 was acting in an abnormal or criminal manner for a Soviet strategic missile submarine. According to an internal intelligence memo directed to Henry A. Kissinger in May 1974, K-129's recovery site is within the 500 nm transit lane used by a Soviet Yankee-class submarine on its initial deployment to the East Pacific.[23]

Craven also noted:

While the Russian submarine was presumed to be at sea, an oceanographic ship of the University of Hawaii was conducting research in the oceanic waters off Hawaii's Leeward Islands. The researchers discovered a large slick on the surface of the ocean, collected a sample, and found that it was highly radioactive. They reported this to George Woolard, the director of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysical Research.[7]^: 216

Anatoliy Shtyrov (Анатолий Штыров), a former Soviet Pacific Fleet Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, has said that K-129 would normally patrol an area off the West Coast of the United States, but it was sent on an unscheduled combat patrol in the eastern Pacific only 1½ months after returning from its regularly scheduled patrol.[24] Vladimir Evdasin (Владимир Евдасин), who from June 1960 to March 1961 served aboard K-129, reported that K-129 was sent on a secret mission in response to the substantial U.S. naval force build-up off the Korean coast after the Pueblo incident.[25] K-129's mission was in support of North Korea, which was an ally of the Soviet Union, and directed against U.S. naval operations, Pacific bases, and U.S. maritime support lines to Southeast Asia.[26][27]