In early 1968, the Soviet nuclear ballistic missile submarine K-129
went abruptly missing near American waters off the coasts of Hawaii.
The Soviets were unable to locate their incredibly powerful machine, but the US Navy did. And with
the cooperation of the CIA and billionaire Howard Hughes, they launched Project Azorian to salvage
the wreckage, resulting in one of the most impressive naval engineering feats of all time.
Still, upon further examination of the remains of K-129, many experts concluded
that the Soviet submarine apparently sank while attempting to launch a nuclear strike,
an attack that would have dramatically changed the course of history....
K-129
In 1968, the tensions of the Cold War were at their highest and the Vietnam War casualties kept
mounting up, while in the continental US, anti-war and racial protests were causing civilian unrest.
Martin Luther King had just been assassinated, and the US Army and Marines were having a tough
time in Vietnam after the massive North Vietnamese Tet Offensive.
While the US and its allies were desperately rallying forces to stop
their enemy from taking over South Vietnam, the Soviet Navy patrolled
the oceans to gather intelligence about the latest American naval operations.
One such vessel was the Soviet nuclear ballistic missile submarine K-129. This
diesel-electric Project 629 submarine was part of the Soviet Pacific Fleet based at Kamchatka.
K-129 was one of the world’s most potent underwater machines of her time,
although some of her components were quite dated. The submarine was laid down in May of 1958 and
underwent modifications in 1964, re-entering service in 1967.
She was equipped with a D4 launch system with three SS-N-5 Serb nuclear missiles.
Each had a range of over 1,670 kilometers and a 1- megaton warhead.
K-129 was manned by an experienced crew of almost 100 men under veteran captain Vladimir I. Kobzar
and senior assistant Alexander M. Zhuravin. Kobzar was a highly regarded officer and was
already being considered to become the commander of the entire Pacific fleet when the time came.
Meanwhile, Zhuravin was also one of the most capable officers in the fleet and was eager to
climb up the ranks to prove his value. A Submarine Goes Missing
In February of 1968, K-129 was tasked with her third patrol, and the top-secret mission
was expected to be completed by May 5. It is believed that the objective
was to gather intelligence about American underwater listening posts in the Pacific.
When the submarine departed on February 24, it reached deep water,
performed a test dive, and returned to the surface to check if everything was in order.
K-129 then radioed the command post relaying that everything was fine,
and proceeded with the mission.
As the submarine reached the 180th meridian and arrived at the patrol area,
the crew made radio contact again. It would be the last time that K-129 radioed the headquarters.
Almost a month after K-129 had departed, the Kamchatka headquarters became highly concerned.
She had missed two radio check-ins and was ordered to break the radio silence.
However, no response ever came back.
Consequently, the Soviets concluded that K-129 had gone missing and immediately began
assembling a search and rescue operation with air, surface, and underwater assets.
The US intelligence noticed the Soviet movements in the Pacific and attributed it to a submarine
loss. They then requested a Sound Surveillance System, or SOSUS, to the naval facilities in the
area to review acoustic records for any anomalies. Meanwhile, the Soviets did not find any trace of
the submarine, called off the operation, and deemed K-129 lost with all hands.
It was now the perfect opportunity for the US Navy to try and find the remains of the
lost Soviet submarine, and SOSUS suddenly detected a bang that could only be attributed
to a submarine near Hawaii. The USS Halibut submarine was tasked with going after it.
The top-secret search operation was codenamed Sand Dollar,
and it would prove to be incredibly successful.
Project Azorian
For months, USS Halibut scanned the ocean floor of the targeted area
using state-of-the-art sonar and eventually found the wreckage in August of 1968.
The K-1291 remnants were found 2,500 kilometers away from Hawaii at a depth of 4,900 meters.
As Halibut surveyed the entire zone, thousands of high-quality pictures were taken
to analyze the state of K-129 and how much of her was still intact.
Naval Intelligence then decided that it would be a good idea to attempt to
recover one of the Soviet SS N5 Serb nuclear missiles or,
at the very least, scavenge the wreckage for Soviet codebooks or sub-technology.
Recognizing the value of recovering Soviet assets, the Central Intelligence Agency
agreed to lead the recovery operation with support from the Department of Defense.
The CIA engineers were in for a colossal task, as lifting a 2,700-ton
and 100-meter-long submarine from the depths of the ocean was not going to be easy.
Thus began Operation Azorian, whose primary objective was to find the most effective way
to recover most of the remains of K-129.
In 1970, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger
convinced President Richard Nixon to fund the top-secret recovery attempt.
By then, CIA engineers had concluded that the only feasible approach to recover the submarine
was to, in the Agency's own words: (QUOTE) “Use a large mechanical claw to grasp the hull
and a heavy-duty hydraulic system mounted on a surface ship to lift it.”
To build this mechanical wonder, the CIA contacted billionaire Howard Hughes in 1972 to join the
project and provide his own ideas for the machine. Hughes, who had already worked with the government
before World War 2 as part of his breathtaking aircraft achievements, immediately accepted.
The ship would be called the Hughes Glomar Explorer, and it would be built by Sun
Shipbuilding & Drydock Company and Hughes’s Global Marine Development Incorporated.
Hughes was to direct the project, and its cost was estimated at about 350 million dollars,
roughly 1.4 billion in today's currency. To cover up the fundamental objective
behind the Glomar Explorer, Hughes told the media that the ship’s purpose was to extract
manganese nodules from the ocean floor and conduct basic marine research at extreme ocean depths.
It took four long years to build the Glomar Explorer, and the end result was a gigantic ship
that included a mixture of assets from other vessels.
According to the CIA’s description of the Hughes Glomar Explorer, it: (QUOTE):
“Included a derrick similar to an oil-drilling rig, a pipe-transfer crane, two tall docking legs,
a huge claw-like capture vehicle, a center docking well called the moon pool large
enough to contain the hoisted portion of the sub, and doors to open and close the well’s floor.”
The vehicle was secretly built and loaded into the ship from a submerged barge underneath.
With such capabilities, the Glomar would be able to conduct the entire operation underwater,
and it was then scheduled for June of 1974.
Unfortunately for the CIA and Hughes, the operation’s secrecy was compromised when
weeks before sailing, thieves broke into Hughes’s office and stole documents linking him to the CIA.
Race Against Time
Rumors soon started to circulate, and journalists were eager to uncover the story.
Still, the Glomar Explorer sailed from Long Beach, California, as planned on June 20, 1974.
The deep-sea drillship platform arrived at the recovery site on July 4 and stayed
there for over a month. Two Soviet Navy ships ventured close to the vessel during these days
but did not figure out her purpose. The recovery was conducted as planned.
However, when the submarine was being lifted, she suddenly broke apart. One portion fell to
the depths of the ocean, but the capture claw managed to successfully retrieve the other half.
Although the CIA did not find the desired codebooks, it recovered two of the three
nuclear torpedoes the submarine was carrying and the bodies of six Soviet sailors. The
missing nuclear device was never found. The Agency attempted a subsequent operation
to recover the other half, but continuous leaks prevented it from happening,
as the desperate search for the stolen documents drew a lot of attention.
In early 1975, Los Angeles Times published an account of Project Azorian and its links to the
Glomar Explorer, Hughes, and the CIA, prompting the White House to cancel the second operation.
The CIA neither confirmed nor denied the stories around the project.
In 1992, the CIA Director, Robert Gates, presented declassified footage of the burial ceremony of the
six Soviet submariners that were found during the salvage operation. And during the following years,
the CIA delivered more images, information, and materials recovered from the wreckage
of K-129 to the Russian government. Still, despite the goodwill gestures,
many Russian officers believed that the Americans were playing nice to continue
uncovering the actual fate of K-129 and that it might have been sunk by the US Navy itself.
As years went by, crazy theories about Project Azorian kept circulating,
the most dramatic one being related to the submarine’s missing nuclear missile.
Several experts claim that the Soviet submarine sank while attempting to launch the nuclear device
to an unknown location in the Pacific, which would have likely started a Third World War.
However, the true story remains incomplete, and both the CIA and Russia
still have classified material about the submarine and the salvage operation.
For the time being, no one knows for sure where the missing nuclear device is.
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