Course of trouble
… Under cover of darkness in the early morning of February 24, 1968, the diesel-electric submarine "K-129", hull number "574", left Krasheninnikov Bay and headed for the Pacific Ocean, towards the Hawaiian Islands.
On March 8, at the turning point of the route, the submarine did not give a signal to pass the control line. The faint hope that the boat was drifting on the surface, devoid of speed and radio communication, dried up after two weeks. A really large search operation has begun. For 70 days, three dozen ships of the Pacific Fleet surveyed the entire K-129 route from Kamchatka to Hawaii. All the way, water samples were taken for radioactivity (there was an atomic weapon on board the submarine). Alas, the boat has sunk into obscurity.
In the fall of 1968, sorrowful notifications were sent to the relatives of the missing sailors from the K-129 crew across the cities of the Soviet Union, where the column "cause of death" read: "recognize dead." The military-political leadership of the USSR hid the fact of the disappearance of the submarine from the whole world, quietly excluding the K-129 from the Navy.
The only one who remembered about the lost boat was the US Central Intelligence Agency.
Avral
The nuclear submarine "Barb" (SSN-596) was on duty in the Sea of Japan when something unexpected happened. A large detachment of Soviet ships and submarines went out to sea. It was surprising that the sonars of the ships of the USSR Navy, including submarines, were constantly "working" in an active mode. It soon became clear that the Russians were not looking for an American boat. Their ships were rapidly moving eastward, filling the airwaves with numerous messages. The commander of USS "Barb" reported to the command about the incident and suggested that, judging by the nature of the "event", the Russians are looking for their sunken boat.
US Navy specialists began to listen to kilometers of tape recordings received from the bottom acoustic stations of the SOSUS system. In the cacophony of the sounds of the ocean, they managed to find a fragment where the "clap" was recorded. The signal came from a seabed station installed on the rise of the Imperial Mountains (a section of the ocean floor) at a distance of more than 300 miles from the alleged crash site. Taking into account the SOSUS direction finding accuracy of 5-10 °, the position of the "K-129" was determined as a "spot" measuring 30 miles. The Soviet submarine sank 600 miles north-west of Fr. Midway (Hawaiian Archipelago), in the middle of an ocean trench at a depth of 5000 meters.
Solution
The official refusal of the USSR government from the sunken "K-129" led to the fact that it became "ownerless property", thus, any country that discovered the missing submarine would be considered its owner. Therefore, in early 1969, the CIA began discussions about the possibility of lifting valuable equipment from a Soviet submarine from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The Americans were interested in literally everything: the design of the submarine, mechanisms and instruments, sonars, documents. A special temptation was caused by the idea of penetrating into the radio communications of the Soviet Navy, "splitting" the ciphers of the radio exchange. If it is possible to extract the radio communication equipment, it is possible with the help of a computer to open the algorithms for encoding information, to understand the key laws of the development of ciphers of the USSR, i.e. to reveal the entire system of deployment and control of the Soviet Navy. Nuclear weapons on board the boat were of no less interest: design features of the R-21 ICBM and torpedo warheads.
By July 1969, a clear plan was ready for several years ahead and work began to boil. Considering the enormous depth at which the K-129 sank, the success of the operation was estimated at 10%.
Mission Halibat
To begin with, it was necessary to establish the exact location of the "K-129" and assess its condition. This was done by the nuclear submarine for special operations USS "Halibut" (Halibut). The former missile carrier was thoroughly modernized and saturated to the eyeballs with oceanological equipment: side thrusters, an anchor with a bow and stern mushroom anchor, a diving camera, far and near side sonars, as well as a deep-sea towed module "Fish", equipped with photo and video -equipment and powerful floodlights.
When "Khalibat" was at the calculated point, days of hard work dragged on. Every six days, a deep-sea vehicle was raised to reload the film in the cameras. Then at a furious pace the darkroom was working (the camera took 24 frames per second). And then one day a photograph with a clearly outlined feather of a submarine's rudder lay on the table. According to unofficial information, "K-129" lay on the ocean floor at 38 ° 5 'north latitude. and 178 ° 57 'east. d. (according to other sources - 40 ° 6'N and 179 ° 57'E) at a depth of 16,500 feet. The exact coordinates of the location of "K-129" are still a US state secret. After the discovery of the "K-129", "Khalibat" took another 22 thousand pictures of the Soviet submarine.
Initially, it was planned to open the K-129 hull with the help of remotely controlled underwater vehicles and extract the materials needed by the American special services from the submarine without lifting the boat itself. But during the Khalibat mission it was found that the K-129 hull had been broken into several large fragments, which made it possible to lift the entire compartments of interest to scouts from a five-kilometer depth. The bow of the K-129, 138 feet long (42 meters), was of particular value. The CIA and the Navy turned to Congress for financial support, Congress to President Nixon, and the AZORIAN project became a reality.
Glomar Explorer Story
The fantastic project required special technical solutions. In April 1971, at the Shipbuilding Dry Dock Co. (Pennsylvania, US East Coast) the keel of the MV Hughes Glomar Explorer was laid down. The giant, with a total displacement of 50,000 tons, was a single-deck vessel with a "central slot" above which was located a giant A-shaped tower, aft engine room, bow two-tier and aft four-tier superstructures.
Almost a third of the ship was occupied by the "Lunar Pool" measuring 60, 65 x 22, 5 x 19, 8 m, which served as a dock to accommodate a deep-water capture, and then parts of a raised submarine. Filled with water, it looked like a giant swimming pool except for taps at every corner. From the bottom, the pool was closed by flaps with rubber seals.
One of the myths about the Azorian project - the K-129 broke during its ascent and most of it fell to the bottom - is refuted by the discrepancy between the dimensions of the Lunar Pool (60 meters long) and the K-129 hull length (KVL length - 99 meters). It was already originally planned that only part of the submarine would be raised.
Along the diametrical plane, in the bow and stern of the central slot, movable columns were installed, designed to receive a gripper from a submerged barge. In appearance, they resembled retractable supports on offshore drilling rigs and, according to the authors, should have misled the observers of this strange vessel, which they succeeded at first. For example, on May 11, 1975, a photograph of the MV Hughes Glomar Explorer was published in the Parade magazine with the statement that these columns rest on the bottom. Later, an analysis of foreign publications allowed Soviet specialists to determine their true purpose.
The CIA signed a contract for the design of the vessel with Hughes Tool Co. The choice of this company was not accidental. It was its head Howard Hughes, a billionaire and adventurer, who was best suited to the role of the main organizer and creator of this ambitious venture. It was at Hughes that the first lasers were created, and then the first American artificial satellites. Missile guidance systems, 3D radars - they were all manufactured by Hughes. In 1965-1975. Hughes Aircraft alone had contracts with the US Department of Defense at $ 6 billion.
At the same time, at the shipyards of National Steel Shipbuilding Corp. In San Diego (California, West Coast of the USA), the Hughes Marine Barge and the Clementine deep-sea capture were under construction. This dispersal of production ensured the complete secrecy of the operation. Even the engineers directly involved in the project, individually, could not understand the purpose of these devices (ship, capture and barge).
After a series of tests on the East Coast, on August 13, 1973, the Glomar Explorer embarked on a 12,000-mile cruise bypassing Cape Horn and arrived safely in Long Beach, California, on September 30. There, far from prying eyes, in a quiet bay of the island of Santa Catalina, the HMB-1 barge with a gripper installed on it was waiting for him.
The barge was slowly loaded and fixed at a depth of 30 m, with the Glomar Explorer overhead; the doors of its central connector were pushed apart and two columns were lowered into the water; at this time the roof of the barge opened, and the columns, like Chinese chopsticks while eating, moved the "Clementine" inside the ship - to the "Lunar Pool". Once the grab was aboard the ship, the massive underwater flaps were closed and water was pumped out of the inner pool. After that, the ship began a huge, invisible to the prying eye, work on the installation of the gripper, connection of all cables, hoses and sensors.
Clementine
Cold summer 1974, depression north of the island of Guam in the western part of the Pacific Ocean. The depth is 5000 meters … Every 3 minutes a section 18.2 m long is fed by a crane. There are 300 such sections in total, each as strong as a gun barrel.
Lowering and lifting of the Clementine deep-water gripper is carried out with the help of a pipe string - a lifting pipe, 5 kilometers long. Each section of the pipe has a conical thread, the sections are carefully screwed into each other, the grooves ensure reliable locking of the entire structure.
The actions of the Glomar Explorer were watched with interest by Soviet sailors. The very purpose of the operation is not clear to them, but the fact of deep-sea work in the middle of the Pacific Ocean aroused suspicion among the command of the USSR Navy.
The ship of the measuring complex "Chazhma" and the rescue tug SB-10, which were nearby, caused a lot of trouble for the Yankees. Fearing that the Russians would take the Glomar Explorer by storm, they had to fill up the helipad with boxes and raise the entire crew to their feet. Alarming data came from the "Lunar Pool" - the wreckage of the boat is radioactive, obviously one of the nuclear charges has collapsed.
Unfortunately, this is where the CIA report released on February 12, 2010 ends.
"Clementine" with parts of "K-129" climbs aboard the ship, "Glomar Explorer" leaves with its booty for Hawaii …
Some events related to the project
In October 1992, at a meeting in Moscow, CIA Director Robert Gates handed over to Boris Yeltsin a videotape recording the burial ritual of the bodies of 6 Soviet submariners from the K-129 crew. Three of them: the torpedo operator of the sailor V. Kostyushko, the senior hydroacoustist of the sailor V. Lokhov and the senior torpedo operator of the sailor V. Nosachev were identified by documents. The bodies of all six were placed in a container (the remains were radioactive). Then, in compliance with the Soviet naval burial ritual, on September 4, 1974, under the chaplain's prayer in Russian and English and under the anthems of the USSR and the USA, the container was lowered into the ocean. To the credit of the Yankees, the ceremony was held sincerely and with respect for the Soviet sailors.
Glomar Explorer continues to search in the depths of the World Ocean. Currently, a unique ship, chartered by Marathon Oil until March 2012, is ironing the bottom near Indonesia.
Ultimately, the United States gained a serious trump card in the Cold War, and the Azorian project became an outstanding achievement of naval engineering of the 20th century.
