A Project Called Azorian: Doing the Impossible
More than fifty years ago in March 1968 the US Navy observed a massive Soviet naval and air search in the North Pacific Ocean. The USN monitored the search over the next few months and concluded the Russians lost a submarine and were unable to find her. Using acoustic records from listening stations in the Pacific, the Navy discovered an explosive event that occurred just before and in the same area where the Soviet’s were looking. The Navy deployed a specially equipped spy submarine to secretly search the seabed where the event occurred and found and photographed the wreckage of the Russian submarine K-129 that rested on the seafloor of the North Pacific Ocean (Figure 1).The K-129 was a diesel electric Golf II-class Soviet submarine armed with nuclear tipped ballistic missiles. The large intact portion of her wreckage included one ballistic missile with its warhead, the submarine’s sail where top-secret code equipment and documents would be found, and her bow section with nuclear torpedoes. It would be an amazing intelligence coup if the US could secretly recover the submarine. The problem was that it lay on the bottom of the North Pacific Ocean at a depth of sixteen thousand feet. But, the Central Intelligence Agency came up with an audacious plan to recover the submarine without the Russians knowing. It became a top-secret project code named Azorian.How to Secretly Recover the SubmarineInitially, a Navy special projects group proposed using small, unmanned vehicles to recover selected components that had particular intelligence value. However, the Chief of Naval Operations wanted to recover the whole submarine, and the Defense Department turned to the Central Intelligence Agency and asked if they could come up with a way to secretly pick up the forty-million-pound section of the submarine from a depth of three miles.The challenge was accepted by the “wizards” of the CIA’s Science and Technology Directorate who developed the first intelligence satellites and the high-altitude U-2 reconnaissance spy plane. Although the group had near zero knowledge or experience in ocean technology, they came up with a plan to use a giant surface ship to lower a three-mile-long pipe string with a claw or capture vehicle on the end to grab the submarine and raise it to the surface.Aside from the extreme technical challenge, they would have to do it without the Russian suspecting what they were doing. To hide the real purpose of Azorian, the CIA developed an elaborate cover story that the Project was a commercial venture to mine mineral deposits called manganese nodules that were found on the deep seabed of the Pacific Ocean (Figure 2). At the time, a number of companies were beginning to explore for manganese nodules that some claimed would displace existing land mines as the primary source of nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese. The cover story explained the ship as a deep ocean mining vessel that lowered a mining machine to the seabed on a long pipe string where it would collect nodules and be raised back to the mining ship when it was full.The CIA recognized that there could be no overt U.S. Government involvement without attracting close Soviet scrutiny and learning the actual purpose of the Project. Howard Hughes agreed they could use his Hughes Tool Company in Houston, Texas as the front for a commercial deep ocean mining operation. The company was ideal because it was privately owned, had no shareholders, was financially capable of funding the project and Hughes habitually operated in secrecy and was known for his personal eccentricities and speculative investments.Bottom photograph of manganese nodules in the central Pacific taken through a one-foot square wire grid during a seabed survey. Source: Authors photographThe Ship and the Capture VehicleThe surface ship was built by Global Marine and named the Hughes Glomar Explorer. She was designed by John Graham, Global’s chief naval architect, and later recognized as nothing short of an engineering marvel. The engineers did calculations on slide rules, plans were drafted using pencils, erasers, T-squares, triangles, and drafting paper to produce blueprints. Specifications were handwritten in cursive and typed on manual typewriters.At first glance the Explorer appeared to be similar to a supersized offshore oil and gas drilling vessel with a derrick to lower and raise the pipe string, a moon pool under the derrick for the pipe to pass through, a pipe handing system and thrusters to keep the ship on station over a specific location on the seabed. The Explorer displaced over fifty thousand tons, weighed more than the battleship Missouri, was over six hundred feet long, had a beam of over one hundred feet, and a derrick that was over twenty-four-story high.The heavy lift system needed forty-eight hydraulic pumps; the derrick and lift system sat on a base that used sixty-five-inch air springs; the largest gimbled bearings ever built were used to isolate the system and the derrick from the ship’s pitching and rolling motions; and, two long docking legs on either end of the moon pool to stabilize the submarine when it was raised into the moon pool that was two hundred feet long, seventy-five feet wide and sixty-five feet high.The capture vehicle, designed and built by Lockheed, was one hundred eighty-foot-long, fifty-eight foot wide. It was nicknamed Clementine after the daughter in the song about a miner, forty-niner who was excavating for a mine. To minimize the weight, the sections of the pipe string were tapered, and the capture vehicle was made up of individual high strength steel tines or davits attached to a long central beam or strong back.Acoustic sensors, closed circuit tv cameras, and propellers driven thrusters on the capture vehicle were used to position it over the wreckage of the submarine. The large hydraulic cylinders at each corner of the capture vehicle would support it on the seabed while the davits were driven under the submarine using water jets to help them penetrate the sediment. Once the davits cradled the submarine, the cylinders would be extended, pull the submarine out of the sticky sediment and left behind as the submarine was lifted off the seabed.The collector vehicle was assembled out of sight in a huge specially built barge so no one would get even a glimpse of what it looked like. Named the Hughes Mining Barge, it was about three hundred feet long, one hundred feet wide, one hundred feet high and still holds the record as the world’s largest submersible structure. It had a retractable roof and was submerged in shallow water while the Explorer was positioned over the barge and the capture vehicle was lifted into the Explorer’s moon pool without being observed. Once the submarine was recovered, it was intended that the process would be reversed and the capture vehicle with the submarine would be lowered into the submerged barge.Patch worn by A and B crews of the Hughes Glomar Explorer for Project Azorian. Credit: David PashoThe MissionThe Explorer arrived over the wreckage of the K-129 in the North Pacific on July 4, 1974. Because of bad weather it was mid-July before the Explorer began to lower the capture vehicle to a depth of sixteen thousand two hundred feet and position it over the submarine. When the davits were extended under the submarine they encountered higher than anticipated resistance but were successfully extended. Once cradled, the capture vehicle’s hydraulic breakout legs were extended and the K-129 broke free of the seabed on August 1. A few days later when the submarine had been raised to about three thousand feet above the seabed, the heavy lift system lost a tremendous amount of weight. A large part of the K-129 was lost and sank back to the seabed. While on site, Soviet intelligence vessels watched, harassed and questioned what the Glomar was doing but did not interfere the recovery operation having concluded the Americans were looking for oil. After reporting the loss of most of the submarine, the Explorer was instructed to go to a location off the west coast of Maui where the B crew would relieve the A crew. On the way, the A crew began to exploit the forward section of the submarine and carried out a formal burial at sea of several Soviet seaman found in what was the K-129’s torpedo room.When the Explorer anchored off Maui in August, the B Crew relieved the A Crew and finished exploiting the forward section of the K-129. A small group of engineers who worked with John Graham met on the fantail of the Explorer at sunset and released his ashes into the Pacific Ocean. It was the last request of the man responsible for what was arguably the most impressive feat of marine engineering in the twentieth century.A Second Mission was CancelledBecause the Soviet’s closely observed but did not interfere with the recovery operation, the CIA believed the Soviets did not suspect what the Explorer was doing and planned a second project, code named Matador, to recover the lost section of the K-129. That was until March 1975 when a reporter broadcast a reasonably accurate story about what he called the most audacious covert operation in CIA history on his weekly radio show. The next day, the bold headline at the top of the front page of the New York Times morning edition read CIA Salvage Ship Brought up Part of Soviet Sub Lost in 1968, Failed to Raise Atom Missiles. (Figure 5). The Soviet Ambassador to the United Nations lodged a formal protest and demanded the US cease efforts to recover the K-129. The CIA cancelled Project Matador.The Soviets Knew but Considered it Impossible The CIA did not realize that the Soviet naval attaché at their Washington, D.C. embassy received an anonymous letter in late 1970 saying the CIA was hunting for a submarine that sank in the Pacific in March 1968. The Soviet intelligence vessels followed and observed the Glomar Explorer, but it was not until the news stories in March 1975 that the Soviets realized the CIA had located and recovered part of the K-129.The reason the Soviets did not interfere with the Glomar Explorer was their belief that it was technologically impossible for anyone to raise the submarine from a depth of sixteen thousand feet. Although operational security and the deep seabed mining cover story held, it was the technological brilliance of the system that provide the real cover for Project Azorian.