Howard Hughes and the Biggest Secret of the Cold War
Howard Hughes and the Biggest Secret of the Cold War
by Bill Knell
I was in my Senior year of High School when my Physical Science teacher told our class about an amazing new technology that would be used to mine the ocean floor. it centered around a ship called the Hughes Glomar Explorer being built by elusive and eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. He had a daring plan to find and recover everything from manganese particles to gold from the ocean floor according to press releases from his new ocean mining company. However, there was a lot more to this story than the public was being told.
The real story began in March of 1968 about fifteen hundred miles northwest of Hawaii. The K-129, a Soviet Golf II-class ballistic missile submarine, sunk due to “a technical malfunction causing an explosion on board”. The big question was how did the U.S. know about the sinking and the location of the Russian sub? According to an unnamed former Soviet Official the sinking was the direct result of an encounter with a U.S. submarine.
The Soviet sub was shadowing the U.S. Sub and the two somehow collided. It's also possible that the American sub had some sort of super-secret static offensive device in place for just such an occasion. The former Soviet Official didn't elaborate except to say that the U.S. sub was undamaged and aware of the Soviet sub's general location on the Pacific Ocean bottom. At that time the technology didn't exist to explore the wreck. Enter the Central Intelligence Agency of the USA.
Howard Hughes had a long and sometimes rocky relationship with the U.S. Government and Military. However, above all else, he could be trusted when it came to secrecy. Any exploration of the K-129 was considered impossible by the U.S. Navy so they made no effort to even consider or pursue the idea. The C.I.A. wasn’t as pessimistic and had another plan in mind. If we couldn't go to the sub, bring the sub to us! That's when Project Azorian was born and Howard Hughes was tasked with raising the sub. He answered the call and began building a ship with the specialised ability to raise the K-129 from the ocean floor. He had help from government scientists and several other government contractors.
Project Azorian was one of the most complex, expensive, and covert intelligence operations of the Cold War at a cost of about $800 million, or $5.1 billion today. The primary objective was to retrieve the submarine's contents, including nuclear weapons and cryptographic equipment, for intelligence gathering. Knowing that someone was going to notice the Hughes Glomar Explorer, the CIA came up with an excellent cover story. They had Hughes put out press releases saying that his company researchers had found a way to mine the ocean bottom. Given the advances in technology at the time, everyone believed it.
The Soviet Union was unable to locate K-129, but the US confirmed its location from data recorded by four Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC) sites and the Adak Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) array. The US identified an acoustic event on March 8, 1968 that likely originated from an explosion aboard the submarine and was able to determine the location to within five nautical miles. The submarine USS Halibut located the boat using the Fish, a towed, 12-foot, two ton collection of cameras, strobe lights, and sonar that was built to withstand extreme depths.
The recovery operation took place in 1974 using the Hughes Glomar Explorer to raise the K-129. However, during the lift a mechanical failure caused a large portion of the submarine to break off and sink back to the ocean floor. The recovered section contained some torpedoes and cryptographic machines, as well as the bodies of six Soviet submariners, who were given a formal burial at sea. The operation was made public in 1975, revealing the CIA's involvement and the nature of the mission. Watch this YouTube video for a detailed and illustrated explanation of the recovery.
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