HOW THE CIA STOLE A SOVIET NUCLEAR SUBMARINE!!

 

The cold war was as you may very well know, a mysterious time for clandestine missions. Organizations like the CIA, KGB and Mi5 influenced behind the scenes many world events. So much so that some of the greatest movies ( in my opinion) revolve around the dark underworld of intelligence collection.

Project Azorian was also known by the sweet and unsuspicious name Jennifer. Was a plan to recover by the CIA a sunken Soviet submarine K-129.

 

So grab your popcorn and get yourself cozy for an epic story that in some ways is astonishing than the stuff in Hollywood movies.

 

Just after midnight on February 24, 1968, a submarine set out from a major Soviet naval base near the city of Petropavlovsk, on Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula.

Powered by a diesel engine, she belonged to the 629A class of submarines, known to the US as golf II, the sub was on its deployment as far away as the coast's northwest of Hawaii. But on March 8th,the soviet base failed to receive the planned transmission from the sub, The following day, the Soviet Navy began sending a flotilla of subs, other ships, and planes, since there were a million square kilometers of ocean to the cover they were unable to locate the sub’s wreck, months later the crew of the K-129 was presumed to be dead.

 

Since the soviet’s didn’t hide their search flotilla this decried a huge interest from the Americans who at that time had SOSUS-a network of advanced audio receiving equipment--in the Pacific, and they had registered an explosion on March 11th, that's how the CIA came to know that the Soviets were searching for a lost nuclear submarine.

 

Now getting access to a sunken soviet sub is a goldmine for the CIA, they could get access to a live soviet SLBM, their navy command codes and the potential to make the entire soviet Submarine forces obsolete provided them with an opportunity that they couldn’t resist.

 

Now at that time the largest object to be lifted from the ocean was 50 tons and the wreck of the sub remained at 16,000ft farther than any sub could dive, few in the American intelligence the community seemed interested in the task. USS Halibut provided the initial reconnaissance.

 

The CIA had to develop new technologies to recover the  hull and enlisted the company global marine, they also enlisted eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes as a cover for his latest “business venture ” of extracting manganese nodules from the ocean bed.

 

The ship was named the Hughes Alomar explorer and the shell company was called Global Marine Development Inc. Lockheed developed the mechanical arm called clementine to extract the sub.

 

By 1974 the technological hurdles were overcome and the crew started the operation of the coast of Hawaii, the soviet’s by the time they got to know of the project to recover k-129, were to late in their efforts, but America's weren’t successful they cut a small portion of the  sub and while lifting the SLBM compartment the steel wires snagged, to this day a soviet R-21 SLBM lies near the coast’s of Hawaii

 

In the end, the CIA was able to gain access to valuable soviet military secrets which made many of the soviet’s military hardware obsolete potentially gaining a huge advantage if a war were to break out with the soviets.

 

The global explorer’s crewmen did the last rites of the 98 soviet crew at sea,  who died with the k-129 sub; the recording of the ceremony was passed on to president Boris Yeltsin after the soviet union collapsed.

 

The next time you go scuba diving near On the coast of Hawaii just remember that a nuclear-tipped soviet k-129 lies wrecked just beneath the beautiful lagoons!!

CREDITS:

CONTENT WRITTEN BY:    Christy Samuel .

RESEARCH DONE BY: uday.

FINAL TOUCH BY :   VAAGESH RAM.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPER:   WAR  MUDASIR.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPER:   HIRDIYANSH  SHARMA.