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00:14As the festivities of Independence Day were spreading over the United States on the 4th of
00:18July 1974, the Hughes Glowbar Explorer backed down its engines and glided to a stop somewhere
00:26in the central North Pacific. She had arrived at the mission recovery site. All the connections
00:33between the capture vehicle and the control vans had been made at Long Beach. Even though
00:38system preparations had been made during the 14-day trip out, testing was still needed on
00:44the acoustic and camera systems, as well as the automatic station keeping equipment. It
00:50was not long before the crew settled into the routine of long, hard 12-hour shifts. Considerable
00:56efforts have been made to accommodate them while they were executing this formidable
00:59task. The Explorer was a self-contained floating city, built not only to achieve its mission
01:05goal, but also to offer many luxuries and accommodations for her hard-working crew.
01:10There was also time to relax. We had a library of books, we had a film library, a lot of
01:1816-millimeter
01:19films. I think they got about 70 or 80 films. So there were things to occupy us besides work.
01:26The mess hall was open pretty much almost 24 hours a day, and they served four full meals
01:32a day. The food, of course, was superb. We had surf and turf once a week with filet or ribeye
01:39and lobster or shrimp. We shared a four-man cabin with two bunks on each side, and that was pretty
01:48much normal accommodations for most people. Everything as far as the accommodations on the
01:54ship and the comforts were as good as could be made, better than any drill ship we ever had.
02:00Generally, we all got along very well. I don't recall any particular time when there was any problems or
02:07confrontations or difficulties. A lot of people have some good-natured banter tinged with sarcasm,
02:14but it pretty much rolls off everybody's shoulders. I think we were all in a life raft together.
02:19There was some rivalry between the two crews, which is kind of a normal thing, but there was never
02:24anything extraordinary. The exact location of the K-129 wreck site has remained one of the most
02:33closely guarded secrets over the last 40 years, providing fuel to conspiracy theories that proved
02:39to be nothing more than compilations of rumors, educated guesses, and wild speculation.
02:45The recovery site was almost directly on the international dateline. I did a calculation once
02:52that it was six nautical miles from the exact center of the 180 meridian and 40 degree north latitude.
03:01Finally, an independent witness confirms this position to be accurate and true.
03:07It was recorded in the logbook of a British merchant ship, the Bell Hudson, en route from
03:11Yokohama to Los Angeles. The mate said to me, Peter, we got a problem.
03:17I said, what's that? And I said, oh, Les Burke has a heart attack or something wrong with his chest.
03:22He has chest pain. The captain of the Bell Hudson ordered his radio officer to signal for help.
03:27So they got in touch with the U.S. Navy, and the captain said, I've got a ship here,
03:32somewhere about 35 miles, where he came on the air and said he might be able to help.
03:37Having received the distress signal, the Glomer Explorer found itself in a delicate situation.
03:42The law of the sea says you must assist whenever possible.
03:45They had no choice but to radio the Bell Hudson to proceed to their fixed position.
03:50We changed course, seemed towards the ship, had a message passed over. In the meantime,
03:55saying, don't come too close. I'm stationary, and I got a drill and drill down. Stay away from me.
04:00I remember the ship approaching us. It radioed that they had a seaman in distress.
04:08So we arrived there. They got in touch again with the ship, and they said, well,
04:12you sent a boat across. We got a doctor here, and we got medical facilities on board.
04:17We had a fully qualified doctor on board, and he went on a motorized longboat over to the freighter.
04:25He determined that he had to take some x-rays, so he brought the sailor back. He was taken to
04:30the sick bay.
04:31The distressed seaman was diagnosed to be suffering from costochondritis,
04:35an inflammation of the junction between the sixth rib and sternum.
04:39Unfortunately, not a serious cardiac problem.
04:43It must have been about three o'clock. They came back and said, well, you can pick your man up.
04:47So in the meantime, we had arranged that we would give the crew of the Glomer Explorer about 10 cases
04:54of beer.
04:54And a couple of cases of whiskey for being so helpful to us. So we loaded that on, and off
05:00I went.
05:02And I asked one of the crew members, what you're doing here?
05:05They told us we're looking for minerals on the seabed. That was the explanation they gave us.
05:11In later years, I read about the Glomer Explorer that she was to raise a submarine from the seabed.
05:17I was very surprised when I found out.
05:21They say that the ocean can be a lonely place, but it was beginning to bustle like Times Square.
05:26As the Bell Hudson left, the Russian surveillance ship, Kazma, turned up.
05:31We knew they would be there. It was only a matter of what they would do when they were there.
05:36We were in mind of the incident in 1968 when the Pueblo was attacked by North Koreans.
05:44And the ship and the entire crew was taken into captivity.
05:49We got word down from the bridge that there was another ship out there that was just hanging off our
05:55side.
05:55So we watched him as he watched us for quite a while.
05:59Almost immediately, a large twin turbine helicopter took off and circled the Glomer Explorer.
06:07They tried to signal him off because it was actually fairly hazardous for helicopter operations.
06:12He was flying very close.
06:14You could see the door open and a big telephoto lens sticking out, and it was snapping away.
06:20Our security people were pretty excited at the time because they felt that that helicopter
06:27could have landed on our helicopter deck.
06:30We certainly got nervous because we had no weapons.
06:33If anyone wanted to board us, they could board us.
06:35We had to hurry up and put a bunch of material and boxes and whatever on the heliport.
06:41And after buzzing the ship for a while, the helicopter then went back to the Kazma.
06:47The Kazma stayed with us for perhaps two or three days and then was replaced by a
06:55ocean-going tug called the SB-10, I believe.
06:59That vessel hung around for the entire time that we were out there,
07:02and it kind of made an interesting story.
07:05I think there were 40 people on that ship, including two women,
07:09who seemed to trade off dresses amongst themselves.
07:13They came very close into us.
07:15They stayed within 50 feet sometimes.
07:20We had to warn them off.
07:22The Russians couldn't say they didn't know what we were doing,
07:25because they watched everything we did.
07:31There was a rumor that our ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, warned our command more
07:37than once that the Americans were preparing an operation called Jennifer that was to pick up our
07:43submarine K-129.
07:46I know this issue came up at the general headquarters and was reported to the commander-in-chief.
07:53But because of the depth of 5,700 meters, great doubt, so to say, prevailed amongst the high command
08:00as to whether it was technically feasible at all.
08:03Even at that stage, seeing what the crew of the Glomer Explorer was doing,
08:08we did not make the conclusion that, yes, they would execute the lift.
08:14And I think that was a testament to the cover story and how strong it was
08:18that we could pull something off while they were watching us and get away with it.
08:30In the early hours of Sunday morning after four days of complicated system checks,
08:35the capture vehicle was finally ready for its epic dive.
08:38The combination of six years' covert work, the creative imagination of the American engineering elite,
08:45and over $350 million of government investment would finally be put to the test.
08:50When we started those operations, we were nervous, because this is what we were hired to do.
08:56We were hired to get this thing down there and bring it back up.
09:02Asking many different departments, are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready?
09:06We were all anticipating, hopefully, a successful recovery.
09:11Everybody was well enough prepared, and I think everybody was eager to get going with the job.
09:17The gimbal, the heavy lift pipe, the heavy lift system, the pipe handling system,
09:23it's now time. They all had to work together.
09:26As far as any kind of special feelings,
09:29uh, it was just, let's get it on.
09:31The moon pool decks had to be open.
09:34CV had to be lowered on the docking legs. The divers had to rig the bridle.
09:40Once we transferred the load to the pipe, it was then hanging on the heavy lift system,
09:45and when it actually started going down, there wasn't any feeling other than,
09:51can't wait to get to the bottom.
10:18The first 16 hours of lowering had gone fairly well with only a few minor holes,
10:23but it was just the beginning.
10:25It did not go continuous motion at six feet a minute, or else we would have been on the bottom
10:30a lot sooner.
10:31We were busy. I lived on five or six hours of sleep, and I think with that focus,
10:37our anxiety level was high because we were the ones who were having to do the hands-on here.
10:46Engineers in the control center have been concerned for the past 48 hours
10:50over readings that all the beams were losing pressure and slowly drifting in,
10:54the worst being beam 8. This indicated that all of the capture vehicle's beam valves were leaking more
11:01than expected, and soon worries over the possible termination of the mission began to set in.
11:07As the day continued, a good period of running pipe pushed the capture vehicle to a depth of 15,673
11:14feet.
11:15By 10 o'clock, the automatic station keeping system was transferred to the control console,
11:20and the explorer and capture vehicle maneuvered to allow sonar on the CV to search the bottom for the target
11:26object.
11:28We detected the target object at about 700 feet from the bottom with the CTFM sonar.
11:36In the early hours of Monday, the 29th of July, the capture vehicle was just 214 feet from the bottom.
11:43The lowering operation to this point had consumed an intense and demanding week.
11:47When we got to about 200 and some feet, we could not see the target object, but it was available
11:53on CTFM sonar.
11:57As they closed in on the ocean's floor, high-resolution sonar confirmed that they had arrived over the K-129.
12:05When we got to a depth where we could turn on the cameras, we were amazed by how clear everything
12:13was.
12:23Looking at the target object, it looked very intact, except for all the destruction around the missile tubes.
12:30Obviously, there was something catastrophic that happened in the area of the missile tubes, an explosion of some sort.
12:37After locating the K-129 wreck, next the short baseline acoustic transponder system was deployed
12:43to keep the ship in an exact position over the wreck.
12:46We figured it out that if we continued with the pipe that we had in the hole,
12:51that we were going to stroke the injection sub below where we wanted to.
12:56Lockheed and us decided to move to a little bit deeper water, lower the CV down so that we could
13:03add another full 60-foot joint of pipe,
13:06and then raise it back up again, come back over the top of the target, and we would have plenty
13:13of stroke left.
13:15Once the hydraulic sub was connected, we had hydraulic pressure, and we could operate the eight hydraulic thrusters.
13:24The ship was transferred to the automatic station keeping system, such that we essentially had control of the Glomar Explorer
13:33on the surface.
13:35But just as this step was completed successfully, a large hydraulic leak was detected.
13:40We had a tremendous leak rate.
13:42There was a concern that are we going to have sufficient pressure to do all these things, to close the
13:49beams and the davits, to pull the pins on the breakout legs.
13:53The heavy lift system was not designed to pull up those big breakout legs.
13:59This problem could only be fixed temporarily by increasing the flow rate to maintain the hydraulic pressure.
14:05Next, the capture vehicle had to be aligned with the K-129 wreck for touchdown.
14:10Executing this complicated task was only possible via three pre-selected camera alignment points.
14:16The towing eye at the bow, a stanchion in front of the sail, and a chosen fracture of the hull
14:22at the aft end.
14:23It was an exciting time. As we got down, they were relaying information to us that we need to move
14:30here and there before we could touch down on the bottom of the ocean.
14:33All support systems were ready to commence with the set-down procedure.
14:37The 10-foot leg extension restraint cables were each broken in sequence.
14:41Then the four breakout legs were extended to their selected positions for touchdown.
14:48The pipe was continued to be lowered until the aft legs made contact and the cookie cutters were buried in
14:57the soil.
15:08We had a plan worked out that we would offload two and a half million pounds, which had been pre
15:16-calculated to penetrate the soil sufficiently, and go underneath the hull.
15:21The worst thing you could do was to close the davits and strike the hull.
15:27God knows what would happen. The sail would be in the wrong position. You wouldn't be able to pick it
15:32up at all.
15:32It turned out that the soil was harder than anticipated, and so they were not going as deeply as we
15:42thought they should be.
15:43After everything was evaluated, a decision was made to offload a million pounds more weight onto the tips of the
15:50davits.
15:51Anxious moments followed as this decision to discard the pre-mission plan was not to everyone's approval.
15:57We all became very nervous and very concerned in the control van.
16:06Three miles above and unaware of the unfolding situation below, it was believed that sufficient penetration had been achieved.
16:13And the sequence of closing the grabbers and raising the davits to completely enclose the wreck had begun.
16:19But these operations also did not go according to plan.
16:23There was a roll at that time also that seemed like the sail shifted downward, and possibly that might have
16:31caused some damage to grabber number five.
16:35What exactly had happened during this phase could not be determined three miles above,
16:39and would only become clear when the CV arrived back in the moon pool.
16:46In the meantime, all they could do was to hope for the best and continue with programmed events.
16:53The first stage of the containment net could now be deployed.
16:57As the index pole was extended, it released the drag beam which released the chain net to cover the missile
17:03tube.
17:04Once the first part of the containment net had been deployed,
17:07all the data was then re-evaluated.
17:12There was no need to yank this thing out of the butt and head up.
17:16So we had a meeting to make sure everybody was on the same page.
17:20And the goal was given for all four breakout legs to be pressurized to jack both the target object and
17:26capture vehicle out of the silt.
17:28At that point, the beam forward david or the beam itself cracked and maybe broke off.
17:35All we know is that we were no longer holding pressure there.
17:38It was a fairly smooth operation.
17:41Breakout was achieved without any particular noticeable strain on the system.
17:46Once above the soil, the remainder of the containment system was actuated.
17:51The chain net was then pulled taut under the missile tubes.
17:56The intent here was to drag the net under to make sure that if anything fell out of the remains
18:03of the missile tubes,
18:04they would be caught in the chain net.
18:06This operation was monitored by the use of two cameras located adjacent to the containment system.
18:11Do we have any pressure indicated?
18:13Each step required fairly comprehensive analysis.
18:17People were looking at monitors, reading pressures,
18:20looking at the various transduces, the angles on the beams and davits.
18:26We were all pleased to essentially get the command to come up.
18:30We were in a safe condition.
18:32Everything was grabbed and we got word from the CV control room
18:36that they were ready to start picking up some weight.
18:41When the CV went to the bottom, that heavy lift pipe had stretched about 40 feet.
18:47That's how long a spring we had.
18:49It took some time to increase the pressure in the heave compensator
18:54to actually start bringing some weight onto the system.
18:58Once it was determined that everything was a go, the pin pullers were pulled.
19:03We could watch the weight gradually increase, increase, increase until it stopped increasing.
19:10That means we had the whole thing.
19:12We were elated that we had succeeded.
19:15At that point, I did say we have liftoff.
19:24Let's enter into the first building.
19:27Let's enter into the first building.
19:43Let's enter into the second building.
19:52The raising operation was the most dangerous part of the whole mission because we had maximum
19:59load on the pipes.
20:00If the pipe did break, we were going to have a sudden upward movement.
20:06There were thoughts that if something like that did happen, that we could split the ship
20:10at the wing walls and sink.
20:14At this moment, the heavy lift system was not only supporting the weight of 265 pipe
20:19stands, totaling 4,000 tons, but also the combined weight of the capture vehicle and
20:24the K-129 wreck, another 3,129 tons.
20:30Pipe was being retrieved at a fairly good rate, and at that time we noticed that at least one
20:36of the leg pressures was not holding, this was causing some concern.
20:41It was noticed in the video that there seemed to be a surging on the TO.
20:49At the same time, there was a shifting of what appeared to be the sail rotating just before
20:56the early morning, August 4th.
21:00You got to understand, with that length of pipe, it was almost like a spring.
21:04The only failure we couldn't deal with would have been the loss of the pipe for some reason
21:08or another.
21:09We're now asking the system to do the most work that it's got to do.
21:15At this moment, the capture vehicle with its treasured prize had been reeled up 9,360
21:21feet.
21:22An air of nervous anticipation and confidence was to be felt throughout the ship.
21:29You're on the ship all the time and you kind of know what's going on outside by how it feels
21:36in your seat.
21:38things are moving on pretty well, making a fairly good rate of pipe retrieval.
21:43We were in the galley, a bunch of us having an impromptu meeting over a cup of coffee and
21:49the ship just shook slightly like a small earthquake.
21:52I definitely felt it.
21:53I mean, everybody on the ship felt it.
21:55Something had changed quickly.
21:57That wasn't right.
21:59Something had gone wrong somewhere on the ship.
22:27Of course, my thought was it's not big enough for the pipe to let go.
22:31I was told that the heat compensators were driven to their limits.
22:35Which meant that it had lost some weight somewhere.
22:40The relief valves on the heat compensator had opened automatically to bleed off some air
22:46because it was past its midpoint.
22:48That wasn't good enough.
22:50We had to open the major 4-inch dump valves, which made one heck of a racket.
22:54It still wouldn't come down.
22:56So until the heat compensator started giving us the pressure that we could read, we wouldn't
23:02know how much was left on the end of the pipe.
23:05I didn't know if the pipe had broke, and we lost everything.
23:10It finally came down off its tops, and we knew we had the whole pipe there, and we knew
23:14we had the CV on there, and we knew how much we had lost, but we didn't know what we
23:20had
23:20lost.
23:21I called the CV Control Center and told them that we had lost X number of pounds of weight.
23:27And they said, well, it couldn't have been us.
23:29We're looking at the target with our TV cameras and said, well, that can't be, so look again.
23:35Intense minutes followed as the Control Center worked the problem.
23:39They used a multiplex TV system which stored one image at a time from each of the still
23:43active cameras, always saving the last picture.
23:47So they've been looking at a previous image from before.
23:50It was in reality just history.
23:53Having realized this, they switched the system back to live, only to stare in disbelief.
23:58We could see that most of the sub from the sail back was gone.
24:05And they could see that the TIA was barely hanging on beam three.
24:11Most of the weight was being supported by beam two, and that was just the 40-foot section
24:17of the sub.
24:18And part of the target had fallen away and part of their structure had failed.
24:23At that point, we knew that we had lost most of it.
24:27But we still had a piece of it, so keep coming.
24:53As we were coming up, I think we were more concerned at the time with this Russian tug that
25:00was shadowing us and still hanging around our area several miles away.
25:05We made plans when the CV got within 500 feet of the bottom of the ship, way below any divers
25:14that could be launched from that tug.
25:16We would hold until the tug went away, or at least until nightfall, and try and make the
25:23last few hundred feet into the ship before the Russians came again.
25:27This was not the only worry, as alarms were being raised over an increasing amount of
25:32debris from the wreck 500 feet below, was slowly floating up into the moon pool.
25:37Some things would start to float up.
25:39I guess they had been disturbed, perhaps shaken loose.
25:42Should the Russians see any of this debris, it could spell trouble.
25:46For some strange reason, unbeknownst to us, as we were approaching this hold point, the Russian
25:53tug that made a pass, gave us three long blasts, which is a marine farewell, and disappeared
25:58over the horizon.
26:00This opportunity to make haste was taken, as they quickly reeled in the remaining nine pipe
26:05stands, bringing the capture vehicle up to within grasp of the docking legs.
26:10We launched our own divers, and they reported to us.
26:13We ought to be very gentle as we put it on the docking legs and bring it up into the
26:17ship.
26:18It was aligned with the docking legs.
26:20The docking legs were closed and captured the CV.
26:24It was quite a moment that we had closed the gates.
26:27We are now a ship again, and we're safe.
26:29We're not in danger of splitting the ship in half.
26:31There was a big relief on the part of the heavy lift control.
26:34We had shut everything down.
26:36From then on, that was not my job.
26:40Finally, we were able to pump out the moon pool.
26:44And the CV broke the surface of the water in the moon pool on the 7th.
26:49After 15 hours of pumping, eager eyes gathered around the catwalks, curious to see what was
26:55left of their prize.
26:56First of all, there were very few people allowed to even go through the doors to look in there.
27:02Until the hazmat people had been inside, they suggested that we don't go in there and
27:09become sightseers.
27:10They had to shore up the sub with timbers which were brought along specifically for that purpose.
27:16All I can say is that I was in awe of the whole visual effect of a dry moon pool
27:23with everything in there.
27:27It was kind of a son of a gun, you know.
27:32We did it.
27:34The radiologic experts went down to check levels of radiation.
27:38And yes, indeed, there was contamination.
27:41It was safe to work there.
27:44It wasn't free floating.
27:46It was plutonium that pretty much was bonded to surfaces.
27:50It was determined that if there was any cutting done with cutting torches, then everyone had
27:57to wear a breathing apparatus because the plutonium would vaporize and that would be very dangerous.
28:02There were two groups of people that were trained to go and collect artifacts and gather information.
28:11Most people volunteered to go down and help in the exploitation, digging like they were at an archeological site.
28:19It's the closest I can describe it.
28:21One of the ironic aspects was that we found manganese nodules lodged between the pressure hull and the outer hull.
28:30The outer hull was damaged and torn up, but the pressure hull itself was pretty much intact.
28:37I don't remember seeing anything attached on the interior.
28:41There was what seemed to be a solid pile of material, maybe two or three feet in height, that was
28:51very dense and very compacted.
28:54I remember people who were working on this pile actually digging through and pulling things out.
29:01There was nothing I could recognize as the interior of a submarine.
29:05It was about what you'd think you'd see when something implodes with people in it and it was radioactive.
29:13I didn't have any idea of the effect if you do get contaminated until later.
29:22It wasn't like they didn't tell me that. I was bulletproof.
29:26It didn't dawn on me that if that happened, I'd probably be going pretty quick.
29:32One of the bodies was recovered in his bunk, or what remained of his bunk.
29:39He was apparently studying a manual that had to do with the missiles.
29:44It was thought a major discovery.
29:46We had tables set up where things that were recovered of any significance or any value were placed.
29:52Logged, cleaned, photographed, documented, and eventually crated and shipped off.
29:59We did recover two objects that were classified as nuclear-tipped torpedoes, maybe 15 feet long each.
30:07And they were crushed by the pressure at that depth.
30:11If the primary impetus for the program was to gain access to Soviet nuclear weapons technology,
30:16then the acquisition of two nuclear-tipped torpedoes met that goal, no matter how deformed and crushed.
30:25Recovering that submarine was exceedingly important, both to the U.S. Navy and to the U.S. intelligence community.
30:34If we found, in examining the remains of that submarine, that we expected the steel to be this thick in
30:42the pressure hull,
30:43and it was really that thick, we would have had a good benchmark on our intelligence.
30:49In this context, even if the sub was ten years older than the K-129, it would still be valuable.
30:57Again, as a check on how good our intelligence and our analysis was.
31:04In my mind, that money, well spent. Very well spent.
31:09It was helpful. I wouldn't say it was anywhere as useful as it would have been if we totally succeeded,
31:13of course.
31:14But we did get certain things out of it.
31:16If you're a government intelligence officer, obviously you're maybe more disappointed than you can imagine.
31:22I think from an engineering standpoint, it was a success.
31:26But from a Russian intelligence standpoint, they did not know what had been brought up,
31:31so they had to assume that everything on that submarine had been compromised.
31:35And so they have to, you know, change their planning and thinking based on that.
31:39So from that standpoint, I think it was definitely a success.
31:43Prior to the exploitation phase, and as soon as the water had receded revealing the broken grabbers,
31:48it became obvious exactly what had happened in the salvage attempt.
31:52We do know that there were some fractures.
31:56Beam four was broken completely off.
31:59Beam five was also fractured and missing.
32:03And beam six had the davit hydraulic cylinder actually torn off from its gusset mounts.
32:12When they designed the beams and the davits,
32:17Lockheed chose to use a more aging 200,000 PSI yield material, which is a very strong material.
32:25It's also very brittle.
32:27If you look at some of the fractures,
32:30to think that a beam that was something on the order of three feet deep and two feet wide,
32:36made out of two inch thick plate, would fail completely.
32:42The sheer off had to be attributed to not the right material for that particular environment.
32:50Lockheed had a history of working with marriage and steels.
32:54Global Marine did not.
32:56And so we would have never thought about using marriage and steel.
33:01Whatever started the crack, I have no idea.
33:04But for it to fail so catastrophically, I don't understand that metallurgically.
33:09I personally would say, yes, a more ductile steel would work because it allows deflection and distribution of the load
33:18much better than the marriage and steel.
33:20And given the condition of the submarine that was being picked up, you didn't know how that load was going
33:28to be distributed.
33:29You don't know how much structural support it could give itself when you picked it up.
33:34Not being a structural engineer, I had to assume that whoever did the calculations,
33:39the trade off between regular steel, high strength steel and maraging steel was such that you would have to have
33:49much heavier grabbers.
33:51And the weight constraints would be a problem.
33:54So the decision to go to maraging steel was reasonable, even though perhaps there was a trade off in its
34:03brittleness.
34:04As speculations grew as to the reasons surrounding the failure, an elite Tiger team was assembling at Lahaina to find
34:11answers and explain the failure to officialdom.
34:13I never attended a postmortem on that, but I do know that when we redesigned it, all the beams and
34:19davits were made out of a much more ductile steel.
34:27After departing the recovery site, the Glomar Explorer transited slowly towards Hawaii.
34:34About 500 nautical miles northwest, she came to a halt to dispose of radioactive materials that were without intelligence value.
34:42There was a lot of apprehension. We got halfway to Hawaii and we stopped, went dead in the water and
34:48just stayed there.
34:49And we're going, why are we sitting here? In the meantime, we're going down and doing our work every day.
34:54I think it was a week. You start to get where you're talking mutiny almost.
34:58I've been gone now for about eight weeks. And you go dead in the water, crews are not real happy
35:05with that.
35:06Let's get somebody else on here to finish this up.
35:08I was relieved that it was over. After two months at sea, I was ready to go home and generally
35:16just a sense of relief.
35:18On the 16th of August, the Explorer dropped anchor at Punoa Point off Maui.
35:23And the long awaited crew change took place as two charter jets arrived with the B crew.
35:30Well, the A crew was always to go in and get any major artifacts, but the cleanup job and everything
35:36else was B crew.
35:37And when we got off, we had done what we were supposed to do.
35:40For the crew, some of the experiences of the last three months were going to need some time to get.
35:45To come to terms and cope with the psychological effects caused by the nature of the mission, everyone was left
35:52to his own devices.
35:53Of all the times of my life, that was probably the longest period of tension that I'd ever experienced.
36:04While the A crew returned home, the B crew got down to the mundane efforts of clearing up.
36:10One of their last jobs to perform on their way back was the task of burying the Soviet crewmen that
36:16had been exhumed from the K-129 wreckage.
36:19Unlike the Russians, who had handed over the remains of the 34 British sailors found when they'd salvaged and gleaned
36:26the sunken British submarine L-55 in the Baltic in 1928, albeit 10 years later.
36:32The Americans, while intent on respect, made sure secrecy was still to prevail, at least for another 18 years.
36:39We had to come up with a proper ceremony. We thought someday we may have to give this to the
36:45Russians, and we wanted to assure them that we treated their people with due respect and honor.
36:51The Glomar Explorer moved 90 miles southwest of Hawaii where they stopped.
36:57As the sun was setting, a solemn service was held, and a vault containing the radioactive remains of six Soviet
37:04crewmen was slowly lowered into the ocean.
37:06And in an unprecedented service during the Cold War, the Americans paid their respects to the Soviet sailors for the
37:13services they had rendered their nation.
37:16These were young men who were doing their part in what they felt was the right thing.
37:24They were defending their nation.
37:26You had to feel a great sense of respect and also feel sadness because you knew that their families were
37:33grieving for them.
37:40But it was not to be the only burial to take place on their journey home.
37:45One month earlier, on the 2nd of August, John Graham had passed away in the Hogue Memorial Hospital in Los
37:50Angeles.
37:51When we heard that he passed away, I was very much saddened. I considered him a friend as well as
37:57a mentor.
37:58And it was a shame that he did not learn of the final disposition, whether or not it failed or
38:04it worked.
38:05We did what we were expected to do. I'm sure it would have pleased him.
38:11He certainly has been an inspiration long past his death in my life.
38:16In a fitting tribute and last wish, John Graham's ashes were brought out from Los Angeles and scattered from the
38:23stern of the Glomar Explorer before she set sail for home on the 10th of September, 1974.
38:34As the Glomar Explorer docked at Long Beach on the 21st of September, 1974, rumors of a second mission to
38:40retrieve the K-129's drop sail section had started to spread already.
38:44There were rumors immediately, you know, well, we're going back out. The guys that I worked with said, no, I'm
38:50not, especially the heavy lift operators.
38:54If you can imagine, they're sitting in front of this console with all these lights going off, alarms going off
38:59continuously.
39:00I mean, there was a tremendous amount of pressure on these guys. They didn't think that they wanted to be
39:05a part of that again.
39:06It had nothing to do with the mission. The intenseness was too much.
39:09I had looked forward to the end of the program. I wasn't looking forward to going out again, but I
39:15knew that if we did, I would respond to that challenge as well.
39:24The rumors of a new mission were soon to become a reality.
39:28On the 20th of October, 1974, Project Azorian was officially closed and the very next day, Project Matador initiated.
39:35But the mission to go out and pick up the remainder of the K-129 was about to be dealt
39:41a serious blow.
39:43By late 1974, most of the major news organizations had gotten wind of the CIA effort to recover a sunken
39:50Soviet submarine called Project Jennifer.
39:53But what had been uncovered was the Jennifer security system conceived and written by the CIA specifically to cover Navy
40:00and CIA underwater espionage projects run by the National Underwater Reconnaissance Office.
40:05Azorian was just one of many projects in the system, but soon became popularly known as Project Jennifer.
40:11For months, William Colby had spent a good deal of his time making calls and visits to persuade the media
40:17on grounds of national security not to print any stories on the matter.
40:22In each case, Colby was successful, but his luck ran out with Jack Anderson.
40:28I spent a good part of the half hour before he went on the air trying to convince him not
40:33to air it.
40:34I was angry that a newspaper would publish anything that was obviously that national sensitive.
40:40You didn't have to be in the intelligence business to know it was.
40:43We kind of knew that the government was out there putting out fires wherever they could.
40:50I had to make a decision about what to do next because we were preparing the CV for a second
40:58attempt.
40:58The argument was this is a very valuable thing and we hope to be able to go back again next
41:05summer and finish the job that we partially finished the previous summer.
41:09All I can say is it's a shame. Personally, I felt it was a betrayal.
41:15Everybody at Global Marine was fully prepared to never tell that story.
41:20The people that told us not to break the story broke the story.
41:26Whoever broke the story, the CIA was left to deal with the repercussions of these revelations in the American press
41:32and the thoughts of what to do next.
41:35Also, as stories started to appear in the foreign press, Moscow soon voiced its concern.
41:41They had never officially declared the K-129 as missing and had never learned of exactly what the Americans had
41:47recovered.
41:48They certainly wanted to avoid any details being revealed that could cause them embarrassment now, seven years on.
41:55Soon, Anatoly Dobrinin, the Soviet ambassador in Washington, sent a memo to Kissinger pointing out the political ramifications of the
42:03action and demanding an explanation.
42:06I recommended to President Ford that he put out the order that everybody keep quiet.
42:12Nobody say anything official.
42:15Whatever the press was saying, that was their business.
42:18But no backgrounders, no explanations, nothing. Just shut up.
42:22And we did and the Soviets didn't say anything.
42:26Conforming to President Ford's standing instruction not to comment, Kissinger replied to Dobrinin that
42:32The United States has issued no official comment on the matters related to the vessel Glomar Explorer.
42:38It is the policy of this government not to confirm, deny or otherwise comment on alleged intelligence activities.
42:46This is the practice followed by all governments, including the USSR, regardless of press speculation.
42:52There will be no official position on this matter.
42:56Over three decades later, this government line still remains in effect, while the surviving mission members also have remained, for
43:03the most part, silent about their experience on the mission.
43:09As the Cold War came to an end and the tension between East and West receded, the silence of a
43:15project to Zorian still remained firmly in place.
43:19I believe the major documents, records, logs related to the Glomar Explorer are still classified because of bureaucratic inertia.
43:31And the United States government, especially the military's attitude toward classification of historic documents, how the Glomar Explorer records and
43:43logs could help anyone 30 years after the event.
43:47It's ridiculous.
43:48But that's the way the United States government operates.
43:52But in 1992, it seemed there was time for rapprochement between the superpowers.
43:56Task Force Russia was formed to account for all the unexplained incidents from four decades of Cold War.
44:03At least two directors of Central Intelligence have discussed the program.
44:08Robert Gates went to Moscow in 1992, personally met with Boris Yeltsin, gave him the film of the aerial at
44:17sea of the Soviet submariners, and gave him the flag that was used to drape the coffin.
44:23James Wolsey gave Ambassador Toon permission to turn over the bell that had been recovered from the wreck.
44:31My understanding is that the Russians are still interested in the loss of the K-129 because of the lack
44:39of knowledge as to precisely what happened.
44:43For the Soviets, Project Jennifer was still an open wound.
44:46They believed that behind the American policy not to confirm, deny or otherwise comment on alleged intelligence activities may lie
44:55hidden even more sinister secrets about the incident.
44:58Every time there is another submarine incident in the world, let alone related to the Russian Navy, such as the
45:05loss of the Kursk, this immediately brings back into the headlines the issue of what happened to the K-129.
45:14I had all reasons to assume that it was the submarine swordfish that sunk our submarine, although unintentionally. That is
45:23still my conviction, and I will never give up this belief, and I will defend it in front of anybody.
45:31Admiral Dagallo bases this accusation on an intercepted communication by Soviet intelligence that stated the USS Swordfish had set course
45:40for Yokosuka, Japan, after an accident at sea around the same time as the disappearance of the K-129.
45:48And also that it had carried out extensive emergency repairs to its sail area at the U.S. base there,
45:53under a veil of total secrecy.
45:57But in September of 2007, the U.S. finally handed over the swordfish's deck logs, confirming what they'd been telling
46:04the Soviets at every meeting for the last 15 years.
46:07That the swordfish was operating in the sea of Japan as part of the reaction to the Pueblo seizure at
46:14the time of the K-129 sinking.
46:18Reinforcing my belief that there was no collision between the swordfish and K-129, regardless of all the conspiracy theories.
46:30Basic research of public records could have revealed vital information to the Russians over the last 40 years if they
46:36had only looked at the Yokosuka morning newspapers in Japan on the 18th of March, 1968.
46:43There, in plain sight, was the USS Swordfish, with its bent periscope and undamaged sail for the entire world to
46:50see.
46:51And not a sign of any veil of total secrecy.
46:59In 1976, the Glomar Explorer, now without a purpose, was leased out to the Ocean Minerals Company, ironically to commercially
47:08harvest the very manganese nodules that it had used so successfully as its previous cover story.
47:15However, in 1978, this venture was closed.
47:19Thereafter, the Glomar Explorer was consigned to the Mothball Fleet in Susan Bay, San Francisco.
47:24I think we could have put the ship to use. There was always this cloud that it was a national
47:30asset, and at any time, for any reason, they could recall it.
47:36Sadly, it remained at Susan Bay for 20 years as legends grew around her.
47:40But in 1996, the Hughes Glomar Explorer was brought out of its imprisonment, gutted, and stripped of its unique heavy
47:48lifting components and pre-fitted.
47:51I could shed a tear or two when I see it being cut up into pieces.
47:55These magnificent bearings being scrapped, and all this pipe that would have had no use anywhere, but it was sure
48:03a shame to see it all gone to the scrap heap.
48:06Since the turn of the century, the GSF Explorer, as she is now known, is drilling deep water projects around
48:13the world, originally for Global Santa Fe, and now for Transocean.
48:18But she, today, is still drilling and commanding significantly decent day rates to drill for oil companies as a deep
48:28water drill ship, and has been very successful.
48:31In 2006, the American Society for Mechanical Engineers recognized the Hughes Glomar Explorer for its unique mechanical engineering accomplishment, and
48:41its excellence as a deep sea recovery system, and awarded it the prestigious Landmark Achievement Award.
48:47It was an honor to have worked on something that was given a status similar to the Wright Brothers plane
48:56or some of the other great inventions of our time.
48:59It kind of gave you a feeling that your professional career was rewarded.
49:04Technologically speaking, the Hughes Glomar Explorer was such a unique ship, I don't think anything else will ever be built
49:11like it.
49:12It was very satisfying to come together and build such a complex ship in such a compressed amount of time,
49:19put together a cover story, the patriotism of holding the cover story together, and the cleverness of the entire venture.
49:27I cannot think of any other achievement that ranks with what was accomplished.
49:35Certainly, the Glomar Explorer must rank as the outstanding ocean engineering activity of the 20th century.
49:43A bunch of guys that were willing to think outside the box, put their neck way out and then go
49:48do it.
49:48And so, there was a lot of pride, personally, just being on that team.
49:54That particular part of my life expanded the way that I think forever.
50:00It's not only the time we spent on the Explorer, but the years we'd put into getting to a point
50:06that we could do those things, proving that, yes, you can do them.
50:09That's just engineering. That's what we people do.
50:14There's nobody doing anything like that today.
50:16When all is said and done, Project Azorian, or Project Jennifer as it came to be known, was an audacious
50:23attempt to do the unimaginable.
50:26If a failure, the sheer scale of the technology and the scope of the thinking that went into the venture
50:32made it a magnificent failure.
50:35If a success, the information gained was so specialized that only a few could appreciate its unique value and accomplishment.
50:43But in either case, 1974 saw the culmination of the boldest intelligence operation in recorded history, in the raising of
50:54the K-129.
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52:02You
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