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00:02In the dark abyss of the central North Pacific lay the cold remains of one of the most daring intelligence
00:07operations in history.
00:10These silent witnesses bear testimony to the wreck of the Soviet ballistic missile submarine K-129.
00:16It came to rest here on the 11th of March 1968 with the tragic loss of its 98 officers and
00:22crew.
00:24The location of the wreck site remained unknown to the Soviets from the time of its loss until over six
00:30years later,
00:31while the Americans had not only detected the K-129's death throes, but had located it within weeks of its
00:37demise.
00:39Working at the cutting edge of technology during the early 70s,
00:42the CIA crafted a program of unparalleled imagination and engineering to secretly raise part of the K-129 in August
00:501974.
00:52This clandestine effort codenamed Azorian to obtain an intelligence coup at the height of the Cold War remains highly classified
01:00even today.
01:01But now, after more than three decades of secrecy, this incredible story can finally be told,
01:07not only by the men who were there that made it happen,
01:10but also with startling never-before-seen film footage of Azorian's actual salvage attempt
01:16and documentary evidence relating to the project's successes and failures in the raising of the K-129.
01:46The K-129, a diesel-powered Soviet ballistic missile submarine, left a naval base on the Kamchatka Peninsula,
01:53for a missile deterrence patrol in an area northwest of Hawaii, in the early hours on the 25th of February,
01:591968.
02:00The submarine carried three of the most modern submarine-launched missiles then in the Soviet inventory,
02:06with a maximum range of 755 nautical miles, each with a one megaton thermonuclear warhead.
02:14The details of exactly what happened to K-129 are only now being unraveled.
02:20But it can now be revealed for the first time that at exactly midnight local time on the 11th of
02:26March, 1968,
02:28K-129 suffered two catastrophic missile-related events,
02:32broke into two major pieces, and sank with all hands.
02:37There were no survivors at those depths, not even for a second or two.
02:43Unknown to the Soviets, K-129's two acoustic death rows six minutes apart
02:47were detected by the U.S. Air Force's systems of underwater hydrophones,
02:52designed to detect underground nuclear tests.
02:56Analyzed by time difference arrival at five locations in the Central Pacific
03:00and through a complex series of calculations,
03:02the Air Force was able to calculate and pinpoint the event to within a five nautical mile radius,
03:08at 40.1 north latitude and 179.9 east longitude.
03:14After they realized the K-129 was lost,
03:19the Soviet Navy did send out search aircraft,
03:21and they also sent out a group of submarines,
03:26attempting to identify the cause of the loss of the K-129.
03:31Lacking a system of seafloor acoustic sensors,
03:35the Soviets failed to detect the explosions that sank the K-129,
03:38and were reduced to a broad area search of the Northwest Pacific.
03:44Only on May the 5th, nearly two months after the K-129 sank,
03:49did the Soviets concentrate their search efforts along its suspected return track.
03:56Throughout this time, no traces of the submarine were found to show that the submarine had perished in the area,
04:03and also indicating the point of the catastrophe.
04:06It was what I guess we could call a very limited search capability.
04:13This, together with Russian pride and a probable deep embarrassment,
04:17meant that Soviet naval search efforts remained ignorant of K-129's probable resting place.
04:22The Soviet Union was a very, very closed society.
04:29It was very difficult to get any information out of official channels on any military accident, any disaster.
04:4472 days later, all search ships and aircraft were returned to their respective bases and air drones.
04:52And on the 5th of May, a meeting was held to mourn the incident of the loss of the K
04:57-129,
04:58and it was openly declared that the K-129 had perished.
05:05The ocean's big and the ocean's deep.
05:08Without the knowledge that the United States had from our network of seafloor acoustic systems,
05:16identifying the approximate location of the explosion of the K-129,
05:22the Soviets were going through a darkened room with their eyes blindfolded.
05:27And their probability of finding the K-129 was virtually nil.
05:33The United States, on the other hand, was in a more advantageous position.
05:41The USS Halibut had originally been built in the late 1950s as a nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine,
05:48and was later converted for special operations.
05:51It was equipped with a system of unmanned robotic deep ocean cameras called FISH,
05:56able to operate at depths to 20,000 feet.
05:59Originally designed to locate Soviet ICBM warheads test-fired into areas northwest of Hawaii in the mid-1960s.
06:07Using this equipment, the Halibut was now assigned the task of locating the wreck of the K-129.
06:13In July and August 1968, Halibut miraculously found and developed over 9,000 usable photographs of the badly damaged wreck
06:22in 16,500 feet of water.
06:25Each frame was like looking at an elephant from three inches away.
06:30You couldn't tell what you were looking at until somebody put it together in a collage, and that did make
06:37some sense.
06:38The pictures were assembled by the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center,
06:43and close analysis confirmed that the forward-most missile tube was cracked, but its missile might still be intact.
06:49Although these pictures have remained classified for over 40 years,
06:53finally this previously unseen mission film can now reveal what they saw.
06:59This is the first time that the wreck and final resting place of the K-129 has ever been seen.
07:05The fact that the K-129 had been precisely located and remotely examined,
07:10and the fact that this was a wreck of the most advanced submarine missile system then deployed by the Soviet
07:14Navy,
07:15provided an interesting Cold War scenario for the United States.
07:19Here lay a cornucopia of Soviet naval and missile technology,
07:23and a potential intelligence coup of the first magnitude.
07:27The possibility of recovering key elements of a Soviet ballistic missile submarine,
07:31along with its latest codes and nuclear warheads, was a temptation that could not be denied.
07:40But this was not to be the first time an enemy submarine would be salvaged for technological gain.
07:46In 1919, the British submarine L-55 sank in the Gulf of Finland,
07:51while with the British Baltic Squadron blockading the Bolshevik naval base of Kronstadt on Kotlin Island.
07:57Rediscovered by Russian minesweepers eight years later,
08:00and subsequently salvaged from a depth of 33 meters in August 1928.
08:05The remains of her 34-man crew were given over by the Soviets to the British Admiralty via Sweden.
08:11The L-55 was rebuilt, and her advanced British design used as the basis for the Soviet L-class submarines.
08:18She was later commissioned into the Soviet Baltic Fleet, retaining her British name of L-55.
08:26Whether salvaging the K-129 would advance U.S. intelligence over Soviet submarines could only be seen after a successful
08:33salvage.
08:34There were several very valid reasons, in my opinion, for going after the Soviet Gulf-class submarine, the K-129.
08:44They were a hostile navy. I mean, they were not sitting off our coast enjoying the California breezes.
08:51They were pointing nuclear missiles at us.
08:53We had spent a lot of time, effort and energy collecting intelligence on Soviet submarines with U-2 aircraft, satellites,
09:03spies.
09:06The commander-in-chief issued an order to set up a group to study all the possible issues involving what
09:13the Americans could learn
09:14in case they were to have access to nuclear weapons, ciphering codes, system codes, torpedoes and mechanisms located inside the
09:24K-129.
09:27What we hoped to get was code machines, code books, related communications documents, information on nuclear warheads, the two torpedoes,
09:38the three ballistic missiles,
09:39and information on the basic method of construction of Soviet submarines.
09:46Despite the U.S. Navy's early involvement in concepts about retrieving intelligence material from the K-129,
09:53a presidential commission reviewed and approved instead a CIA project in mid-1969.
10:00This astonishingly bold plan was to secretly retrieve the forward two-thirds of the Soviet submarine,
10:06along with its potential treasure trove of intelligence materials and documents from an ocean depth of three miles.
10:12But it was going to demand the greatest engineering feat in maritime history if they were to succeed.
10:18And the CIA would have to maintain unprecedented security for years to keep the Soviets from stumbling onto the project.
10:25The project was entitled Azorian, and whatever the outcome, it would make history.
10:36The CIA turned to the offshore oil industry for ideas and a solution to execute their plan.
10:42They approached Global Marines Vice President Curtis Crook and asked him to develop a feasibility study.
10:48The CIA's concept was to pick up what remained of the sail and the front of the submarine in one
10:53piece.
10:53This would require a specially designed one-of-a-kind recovery ship of gigantic proportions,
10:59with the ability not only to raise the wreck, but also to conceal the effort from the prying eyes of
11:04Soviet intelligence.
11:06Well, I believe they came to Global Marine because of their experience, primarily.
11:11We had pioneered the use of floating vessels to drill oil wells.
11:17And a year and a half prior to them contacting us, we had commissioned the Glomar Challenger,
11:22under a long-term contract with the National Science Foundation,
11:26to drill from a ship and take core samples all over the world for scientific purposes.
11:34And this ship had to be able to drill in 20,000 feet of water,
11:39be fully dynamically positioned so that it could hold its position over a spot in the ocean
11:44for a period of several days while we took these cores.
11:48And eventually that ship and the science behind it did prove the theory of plate tectonics.
11:53And I think it was that success that led the government to come to Global Marine.
11:58They only had a few requirements.
12:00And all they wanted to do was pick up an object that weighed 2,000 tons in 17,000 feet
12:07of water.
12:09And it was going to be about 130 feet long.
12:14They wanted to be able to bring this object into the ship so that they could examine it closely
12:21in dry, shirt-sleeve conditions.
12:25I never saw a specification.
12:27There was nothing on paper.
12:30We took notes.
12:32But I'm sure all the requirements were verbal.
12:36They put me on a test committee to figure out how we could pick up a heavy load with the
12:42heavy lift system.
12:43So I had the brilliant idea that maybe we could buy one of these old submarines
12:47and fill it with concrete or figure out some way to pick up this 21, 22 million pound test load.
12:51Anyway, that was probably a bad suggestion because it got me involved quickly.
12:57As I started to learn more details of the project and how it was to be done, I wondered if
13:05it was really possible.
13:06Could we do this?
13:07Could we go down 16,500 feet, pick up such an immense object, bring it to the surface without being
13:16observed?
13:17We had been asked to develop the ship and the equipment necessary to raise and lower several million pounds in
13:28three miles of water.
13:30And we really didn't know that couldn't be done.
13:37The first step to any possible recovery was the first of two deployments of one of Global Marine's drilling ships,
13:43the GLOMAR-2, to an area near the wreck site on the 24th of June 1970.
13:48The objective of this mission was to refine the Navy's information of the K-129 more exactly and to obtain
13:54better photography of the wreck as the CIA's picture collage had its limitations.
14:00Also, improved bottom profile measurements were needed to aid in the design of the grappling device later to become known
14:06as the capture vehicle, the CV, more affectionately by the crew as Clementine.
14:11As well as this, core samples at the bottom were required to estimate the forces involved at the moment of
14:17breakout.
14:17That was important because we needed to know how strong the soil was so we knew how much weight it
14:24would take to drive grappling arms to get underneath the object.
14:28So we needed to find that out. Well, we outfitted the GLOMAR-2, which was one of our smallest drill
14:34ships, but well equipped.
14:36We rigged it with a bunch of cameras and grab buckets and piston cores and other types of hardware where
14:44we could get some of the information we wanted.
14:46Well, we took it out in the sea and we had a failure of the drill pipe and we lost
14:51the bottom hole assembly, so I think that was really the end of that venture.
14:54So we never did find out what the soil was, so we had to make, as engineers do, we have
14:59to make assumptions.
15:01This failure in not obtaining reliable soil samples was to later become critical to the outcome of the mission.
15:07Also, deploying the GLOMAR-2 was a dangerous game to play with Russian intelligence.
15:13Actually, they had shadowed it the entire time with a Russian trawler.
15:17The Russian intelligence trawler in question was the Jidrograph, which was joined several days later by a submarine rescue vessel.
15:24This vessel was to harass the GLOMAR-2 several times during their mission.
15:29Many years later, it emerged that the Russians' sensitivity to the GLOMAR-2 survey was related to a tip-off.
15:36The Russian naval attache in Washington had received an anonymous letter at their embassy prior to the date that the
15:42GLOMAR-2 had left Honolulu on her mission.
15:45Despite the Russian observations of the GLOMAR-2's activities and suspicions about the authenticity of the drilling mission,
15:52Russian naval leadership was quick to dismiss the suggestion that the U.S. might be trying to locate the K
15:58-129 and somehow attempt a salvage of some kind.
16:02Their reasoning was simple and irrefutable. Recovery in any form from such a depth was absolutely impossible.
16:09They would have to wait another four years until the next tip-off before they were to be proven wrong.
16:15Undaunted by the encounter, the Americans got down to work.
16:24The CIA cover story had to be believable, with a good explanation created for building such a huge and unusual
16:30ship.
16:31I think the most important requirement, and probably the hardest, was we had to do this without the public or
16:40the press or the Russians knowing anything about it.
16:44Essentially hiding the real nature of it in plain sight.
16:49Ironically, the answer was to come from the seabed itself.
16:53Research had discovered nodules of manganese, nickel and other non-ferrous metals in mineable quantities at great ocean depth.
17:01This prospect of deep ocean mining would provide the cover story for building the massive submarine recovery ship.
17:07But for the United States government to appear to be involved with any commercial enterprise in the mining of the
17:13world's oceans would not be prudent.
17:15However, if the project were to be initiated by a private enterprise, it might work as a cover story.
17:22Fortunately, just such an enterprise existed. The reclusive billionaire, Howard Hughes.
17:28Well, the cover story was not developed before we really started on the program.
17:34And I do not know exactly where it came from, but it was a stroke of genius, to say the
17:41least.
17:41We had to get somebody who was a real plunger.
17:44Financially, Howard Hughes was a logical contender, and he agreed to help us out.
17:49Anybody in America, especially people in the oil industry, that were familiar with Howard Hughes' achievements and his idiosyncrasies would
17:58have to think it's the perfect cover story.
18:00The fact that he was so secretive as a personality enabled us to be very secretive about the activity.
18:06He was a billionaire in his own right and didn't have to answer to the SEC or the stock exchange
18:12or shareholders or anybody else but himself.
18:14Upon agreeing to the use of his name and his companies for the Azorian cover story, Hughes personally remained typically
18:21far removed from the day-to-day evolution of the project,
18:24and relied upon his management team to work closely with the CIA.
18:31Curtis Crook's next step was to bring in Global Marines Chief Engineer and Principal Naval Architect John Graham into the
18:38picture, on a fully briefed basis.
18:40It was his broad shoulders that had to bear the staggering burden of meeting the 41-month time frame for
18:46completion of the heavy lift ship and its associated components.
18:50The program integration and management was all done by the government program office in Los Angeles.
18:55When I was assigned to the program office, it was as a staff engineer and I had to coordinate the
19:03various subcontractors.
19:05We hired some people that came from other black projects and that's why Global Marine was kind of infused with
19:13talent from some of the other think tanks that were doing black projects at the time.
19:18I got to know John Graham and he started talking about a deep ocean mining project.
19:24A very short characterization of John Graham was that he was the smartest guy in the room and that's not
19:32putting it lightly.
19:34He demanded results and he demanded of himself just as much as he did anyone else. He was the hardest
19:39working individual there I think.
19:41When he entered a room and he made a statement he had credibility that I've seen very few people have.
19:48As an engineer he was the engineer's engineer.
19:51So he understood the ship's structure and this exotic hydraulic system all in one breath.
19:58He never let you forget any detail. He read every document, he looked at every drawing and he just knew
20:04everything about the program.
20:08It was an ability like this that would be the key to assembling the unprecedented systems and equipment needed to
20:14recover the K-129 from three miles down.
20:17The ship, the moon pool, the CV were constructed specifically to pick up one object and one object only and
20:28that was a target object in its specific attitude on the seafloor.
20:32The CEO as we knew it and as we saw on photographs that were taken by the halibut was not
20:39the whole submarine.
20:40It was just the portion from the very tip of the bow to the aft end of the sail where
20:47the three missile tubes were, which was in total about 140 feet.
20:52Later the project required that its design be reviewed and approved by the famous Kelly Johnson and the Skunk Works.
20:59The capture vehicle was essentially a strong back. It was a spine and a very heavy weldment.
21:05This spine had eight precisely placed hydraulically powered beams and davits that would support the K-129 wreck during recovery.
21:13There were 26 lights that had been pre-positioned such that they would provide illumination for areas that were deemed
21:21really important.
21:23There were 12 cameras, two of which were capable of pan and tilt movement in the area of the missile
21:32tubes under control of the operator in the control van.
21:35He had a video console which had 10 monitors for the fixed cameras so that we could align the CV
21:43to the sub properly and one monitor for the pan and tilt cameras.
21:49All the electronics for the cameras, lights and thrusters were enclosed in steel spheres that were mounted on top of
21:55the strong back structure.
21:57There were eight of them and four of them were completely redundant. In other words, all the electronics was duplicated
22:05in four of the spheres.
22:07These were approximately four feet in diameter and they were made of very high strength steel, about two and a
22:15half to three inches in thickness.
22:17The ocean pressures at those depths is always a concern. For instance, here's a styrofoam cup at the surface and
22:24we put one similar to this in a cage and took it down to 15,000 feet and it came
22:29back looking like this.
22:30As you can see, it was greatly compressed due to the ocean pressures acting on it.
22:35The electrical signals were brought down through an electromechanical cable which contained the coax for the video and also the
22:45twisted shielded pair for the modems.
22:48All the commands going down to the CV and the telemetry being returned to the control van were on the
22:56twisted shielded pair.
22:57In addition, there was a three phase system of power to operate all the electrical systems.
23:04The placement of the CV over the wreck had to be exact to within about two feet for success to
23:09be ensured.
23:11Therefore, the capture vehicle was fitted with eight propeller thrusters to allow its position to be finely tuned.
23:19Imagine now, it's three miles away is the ship and this thing is hanging from this rather limber noodle.
23:27And by using the thrusters, they could position the CV over the top of the target.
23:33As the missile tube was the primary intelligence target, a unique containment system was engineered to secure the missile should
23:40it slide out of its tube during the lift.
23:42The containment system was activated in two stages.
23:47The index pole consisted of a hydraulic ram that telescoped the pole down into the soil and at the same
23:55time released the containment net.
23:57The drag beam then pulled the net taut under the missile tube, safely securing it.
24:05It had been six years since the K-129 had impacted the ocean floor.
24:10During this time, the wreck had settled deep into the bottom soil.
24:13It would have to be wrestled loose.
24:15We didn't have any idea what the soil was.
24:19Somewhere along the line, the oil field technology kicked in and we said, well, why don't we put some legs
24:25on this thing?
24:25At the bottom of the legs, fold down pads known as cookie cutters were added to provide for extra grip
24:31and any sliding encountered on touchdown.
24:34The breakout legs were hydraulically driven so that you could let the water out of the legs and its own
24:40weight would then drive these grabbers into the soil.
24:44To assist in the penetration of the soil under the wreck, water jets were lined up along the davits, arms
24:50and tips.
24:50Once the grabbers had encircled the wreck, the legs were hydraulically charged to push up and jack the wreck free
24:56of the bottom suction.
24:57When we actually do the lift, all the pipe is required to do is pick up the pipe's own weight
25:04plus the CV plus the target, not adding this extra 2,000 tons.
25:10Pin pullers attaching the breakout legs to the capture vehicle were hydraulically actuated as the CV carrying the K-129
25:17lifted clear of the bottom.
25:19There is a misconception that the breakout legs were brought up with the CV. Absolutely not the case. They were
25:27jettisoned.
25:30To support the tremendous weight of the CV in the wreck, a series of 60 foot long pipes were connected
25:36together by precisely engineered joints to form a pipe string.
25:40The CV was suspended from it by a three-legged bridle and was connected to the pipe by a pin
25:46joint.
25:47The pipes were made from gun barrel metal and had a central bore to pump seawater down to the CV
25:53under pressure to act as a hydraulic fluid.
25:56We were running for the first time 250 horsepower hydraulic motors on seawater. Seawater is not known for its lubricity.
26:05Seawater was filtered, a scavenger was added and that powered everything that was to take place at the bottom.
26:13Tool joints at the end of each pipe had slots machined into them so that the massive lifting forks on
26:18the heavy lift system could engage and hold them and thus lower and raise the pipe string with the attached
26:24CV and its cargo.
26:26You had six different diameters starting from the bottom with a twelve and three quarter inch outside diameter up to
26:32a fifteen and a half inch at the top.
26:35And each diameter was color coded so that there was no possibility of getting the wrong piece of pipe in.
26:43Due to the high loads on the pipe, the thread was given an interesting design feature.
26:47So it's extremely tapered so that you really don't even get contact from thread to thread until you're about eighty
26:55percent embedded.
26:58And then it only takes three turns of the pipe to bring it up to full engagement on as many
27:03threads as we can and therefore spread the load amongst all the threads.
27:07That's why this extreme taper that you see.
27:10Due to the pipe connections utilizing a heavily tapered thread socket, it was essential to maintain the clockwise pressure on
27:17each joint at all times.
27:18We have these little fifteen horsepower thrusters, which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you space them out, it's
27:25a pretty good torque.
27:26And it was enough to make the CV at least follow what the ship was doing and also to keep
27:33it from unscrewing on its own, just due to its own weight.
27:37The seven thousand ton capacity hoisting system was to be the nucleus of the ship's ability to lower and raise
27:43the loads to and from the sea floor.
27:46It consisted of four big cylinders that operated in two pairs.
27:50And between each pair of cylinders, you had what we called a yoke.
27:54On the yoke, you had latch plates that would close under the shoulders of the pipe tool joints.
28:01And that held the load. These two pairs of cylinders worked in unison.
28:08One foreseen problem to overcome was that the ship would roll and pitch in the seas, putting tremendous and unacceptable
28:15side stress on the pipe string.
28:17The solution was to place the entire heavy lift system on a giant 755 ton gimbal system that would keep
28:25the pipe string and the lift system vertical at all times, regardless of the motion of the ship.
28:32The first time I heard the data of the weights and the circumstances, I didn't believe it.
28:38Four thousand five hundred ton radial loads and one thousand ton axle loads.
28:44Global Marine then explained to me it was intended for a gimbal platform with four bearings for a large ship,
28:50which will mine for manganese nodules in the deep sea at a depth of five thousand meters.
28:58And therefore it was necessary to use a gimbal platform to eliminate the tension in the pipe string to almost
29:05zero.
29:06The pipe string pulls downward, but by suspending it on the bearings, you reduce all the bending momentum in the
29:12pipe string and heavy lift system.
29:15As you can see here, one, two, three, four bearings.
29:20You have to imagine these tremendous loads on each bearing, four thousand five hundred tons, and the big distances between
29:27the bearings of twelve meters.
29:30That's why the bearings had to be manufactured in a special way.
29:34Such bearings had never been made in this scale and weight before.
29:38Each bearing weigh in fifteen point three tons and with an outside dimension of almost two meters.
29:45Bearings of these unique dimensions and loads had never been manufactured before and will never be again.
29:54Having eliminated the pitch and the roll motions of the ship by use of the gimbal platform,
30:00next the ship's heave had to be compensated for.
30:02The idea of the heave compensator came from the need to limit the amount of dynamic tension forces
30:10that are due to this giant spring, which at full depth with the CV on it would stretch some forty
30:17feet.
30:18So we needed to add a second spring besides the pipe, a softer spring into the system.
30:25And that's where the heave compensator system came in.
30:28And it was basically two hydraulic rams on each end of the gimbal system.
30:32And it was full of oil, and the oil went over to what we call an accumulator,
30:37which is partially full of oil, but the top of it is full of air.
30:40And then for each accumulator there were thirty-six big bottles of air.
30:43And all this very high-pressure air, it had to be pressurized to support the load.
30:48So the spring was the air in the system.
30:50Also at this time, a safety device was designed and fitted to prevent the heave compensator
30:55from going over the top of its stroke should the pipe string break.
30:58If something like that happened, we needed some kind of a device that would not eject the entire gimbal
31:06from the top of the heave compensator.
31:08So we did have a snubber system that was designed into the heave compensator system.
31:13So we're talking about a 2,000-ton claw picking up a 2,000-ton object on a 4,000
31:20-ton pipe.
31:21So the heavy lift system was handling about 8,000 tons, and the gimbal system alone weighed close to 2
31:28,000 tons.
31:29So we had about 10,000 tons of iron that was moving up and down in a seaway sitting on
31:34top of these heave compensators.
31:36It was massive, just massive.
31:40Equally massive was the ship's center well, known as the moon pool.
31:44Designed to hold the capture vehicle and its cargo, the moon pool had two large bottom doors that slid forward
31:50and aft.
31:51These doors allowed the CV to be lowered and retrieved when open, while sealing the moon pool and providing a
31:58dry deck when closed.
31:59They were massive. They were little barges. They weren't gates.
32:02They're 9 foot deep, 80 foot wide, and 75, 80 foot long.
32:07They were on a drive system on tracks, and you would move them in together,
32:13and then you would pump air into them so that they became buoyant, and they would float up under the
32:18ship against a seal.
32:19The large central moon pool itself influenced the design of the Glomar Explorer and created several design challenges.
32:25The ship's wing walls on either side of the moon pool had to carry the considerable fore and aft stresses
32:31of the pitching ship in the absence of a centerline keel.
32:34In addition to the central derrick situated on top of the gimbal platform were two prominent structures that straddled the
32:40moon pool area fore and aft.
32:42If you look at the profile of the ship, you see these two giant docking legs, and they had an
32:47extremely important use in getting their CV in and out of the ship.
32:52The docking system was a means to bring the load into the ship.
32:57The ship is moving in response to the surface waves, and the load is actually moving in two, but it's
33:03in a different phase.
33:04When you get within about 200 feet, these loads become very dynamic.
33:08So in order to eliminate these motions, we had two legs, basically, that were extended down 200 feet and then
33:15tilted apart.
33:16And then we could, under very controlled rigid conditions, bring the CV into the ship and we don't have the
33:22clearance problems.
33:23A further use of the docking legs was to improve the stability of the ship in certain conditions.
33:33Work had started on most of the ship's special systems around the spring of 1971, and the contract for the
33:39ship, now known as Hull No. 661,
33:42was let to Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Chester, Pennsylvania, on the 15th of May, 1971.
33:49We had settled on the Sun Ship for various reasons, but it was a shipyard that was big enough to
33:54take on a project like this.
33:56If we're going to make this window of opportunity, August of 1974.
34:00Hull No. 661 measured in at 619 feet long, 116 feet wide, 51 feet deep, with a displacement of 63
34:09,000 long tons.
34:11She was to be twin-screwed and dynamically positioned, utilizing five transverse tunnel thrusters.
34:18Capable of carrying 25,000 tons of consumables and stores sufficient to cover 100 days of operation without resupply and
34:27quartering 178 personnel.
34:29The ship was a self-powered dry dock. Plate thicknesses were one and three-quarter inch, two, two and a
34:37half inch.
34:38I mean, it was a heavy, heavy steel ship. The whole time, which was a couple years, we were concerned
34:44with the design, getting it installed correctly,
34:48making sure it would do what we had designed it to do, and the political and the other aspects of
34:53this job just faded into the background.
34:55For the automatic station keeping system to be used on Hull No. 661,
35:00the normal short baseline transponder system that had been successfully used on the Glomar Challenger was installed.
35:07It had what we call a watt circle, that is, the ship can wander within a couple of hundred feet
35:13of that beacon,
35:14because it's just not as sensitive. The hydrophones are not that far apart because of the size of the ship.
35:22So a long baseline system was installed in addition.
35:24So it would be better if we put a beacon on the ship and send out a signal to four
35:33transponders spaced maybe a mile or two apart on the bottom of the ocean,
35:38and then 15,000 feet of water, and then that transponder sends a signal back to the ship.
35:45By measuring that, we can more accurately determine the position of the ship in relation to the spot on the
35:53ocean.
35:53So for this program, to my knowledge, it was the first use of a long baseline system designed by Honeywell.
36:00That pretty much was the standard until satellite positioning system came into existence.
36:08Both systems could utilize a combination of the five thrusters, three forward and two aft, as well as the ship's
36:14two main screws, to maintain position.
36:20During the early part of 1971, Lockheed Ocean Systems Division was hired and given the task to develop a transport
36:27vehicle and submersible transfer facility for their 2,500 ton capture vehicle system.
36:32The result was the world's largest submersible barge.
36:36The CV was constructed parallel with the Glomar.
36:39Instead of waiting until the Glomar was completely finished and then building the CV in it, they didn't want to
36:45do that.
36:45They wanted it ready when the Glomar was ready.
36:47So somebody came up with the idea of building a submersible barge, building the CV in it, and then when
36:54they were both ready, make the transfer.
36:56That's what we did. It worked fine.
36:59Larry Gloston and associates developed the final construction plans and specifications for Lockheed after the concept was finally approved.
37:06It also included a tight schedule for delivery to Redwood City in approximately 15 months.
37:11National Steel and Shipbuilding Company in San Diego was selected to construct the vehicle and conduct pre-docking trials all
37:19within a nine-month period.
37:21Dock trials were completed on the 14th of April 1972 and the system was towed to sea six days later.
37:28The first dive took place off Coronado Island in 55 feet of water.
37:33The entire barge is made up of ballast tanks.
37:36The wing walls are divided into five tanks on each side and there's a rake tank forward and aft.
37:42These tanks have flood valves below the water line.
37:46When the valves are open and the vents are open to let air go out through the control rooms, the
37:52tanks flood and the barge goes down.
37:55The barge sat on the bottom overnight and was resurfaced successfully the following morning.
38:00Transit of the barge from San Diego to San Francisco started on the 10th of May 1972.
38:04The vehicle was berthed alongside the Lockheed facility in Redwood City where the capture vehicle system was assembled and checked
38:12out.
38:13The barge with the CV inside returned south to Catalina Island for the final CV transfer to the Glomar Explorer
38:20on the 13th of May 1974.
38:30On time and within the incredibly short timeframe of just 41 months, the deep ocean mining vessel known as Hull
38:37No. 661 was launched on the 4th of November 1972.
38:42Amid a party atmosphere at Sun's shipyards, she was christened the Hughes Glomar Explorer after her purported illustrious owner in
38:51front of the hierarchy of her creators, contractors and workers.
38:58Nobody at Sun had any idea that the Hughes Glomar Explorer was built for any other purpose than for deep
39:03sea mining.
39:04But many engineers were puzzled during the final fitting out phase by the strange array of equipment being installed.
39:11Even deploying a partial working crew on board, manning the various shipboard offices as part of the cover story.
39:18After a further four months of fitting out, she was finally ready for her East Coast trials on the 15th
39:24of April 1973.
39:25These trials ended in Bermuda three months later.
39:29She left there on the 13th of August 1973, transiting Cape Horn for Long Beach, where she docked at Pier
39:36E on the 30th of September, adjacent to the waterfront hangar housing the Spruce Goose,
39:42Howard Hughes' famous flying boat, which certainly added credibility to the cover story.
39:47Well, the only thing different than when it left out of Sun's ship when we started sea trials, when it
39:52got around, was the fact that we hadn't put the heavy lift pile on.
39:56And so the first thing that happened at the dock was to see all this heavy lift pipe.
40:01I mean, it took acres of space to be able to store it in this delicate pipe.
40:07The Glomar Explorer, when you would go on board it and see the amount of machinery and the complexity of
40:13the machinery and the amount of pipe that was crammed into a small space, it was impressive.
40:19The first time I saw the whole ship assembled was in Long Beach.
40:22From a distance, it was a big ship. The only thing unusual about it was the profile.
40:26To me, the thing that impressed me most was the massiveness of the components, unbelievable things I designed, how big
40:33they were.
40:33The first integrated sea trials were conducted some 20 miles off the Californian coast and did not go according to
40:40plan.
40:40Actually, the first time out of Long Beach, mainly we wanted to test the heavy lift system and make sure
40:46that it was operating correctly.
40:49We went and tried to run 20 double joints of pipe and we got in trouble immediately because our thread
40:55compound that we used on the pipe actually galled the threads and we put high torque on it.
41:01So, we had a heck of a time getting those joints apart and we had to find a way to
41:06make sure we didn't do that again.
41:08We had operated the pipe off of Catalina a number of times up and down to work some of the
41:15bugs out, but we knew darn well that there were still bugs.
41:19So, I think what we expected to be normal was that we were going to have some shutdowns and we
41:24would have to fix things.
41:27The next critical element of the mission was to load Lockheed's capture vehicle into the moon pool of the Glomar
41:33Explorer.
41:34A lot of areas on the west coast were investigated with the idea of choosing one for the barge and
41:40what they had in mind was something with a gradual or no slope on the bottom and no obstructions.
41:47Catalina filled the bill. The depth was right, the bottom was right.
41:50It was a sand bottom and the location was excellent because it was close by.
41:55The first thing we did on arriving was to get the barge into a two-point mower, put the Orquest
42:01in position after the barge in a four-point mower,
42:05and then connect the two with cables from the bow of the Orquest to the stern of the HMB.
42:11Once that was done, we connected up the air and the electrical umbilicals, and then we were ready to submerge.
42:19As the barge was flooded and went down, it went very, very slowly.
42:26I had raised some eyebrows as to what was going on, but I mean, from a cover standpoint, that was
42:31perfectly logical,
42:32that if you were going to build a secret mining machine, you somehow had to get that machine into the
42:38ship.
42:39We'd always had weekend boaters and holiday boaters going by the barge because we were about a half mile from
42:46a large harbor in San Francisco Bay.
42:48So they were always coming by. Catalina is a big resort area.
42:53There were probably a thousand mowers on that side of the island, and they were full of people.
42:57Of course, we didn't let them come aboard the barge, but they could come up to it, but they didn't
43:02bother anything.
43:03The barge was built with the idea of having a manned barge when it submerged,
43:10but that idea was dropped due to a lack of volunteers, I think.
43:15It was submerged from its tow depth to almost to the O3 level, and then everybody got off, went over
43:23to the Orquest.
43:25The barge was sealed up. Then, remotely operating from the Orquest, the barge was flooded and went down.
43:32When the O3 level, the top deck of the barge went under, the barge would no longer be buoyant.
43:37So, unless you did something, it would go to the bottom.
43:40They had some unique cans on the top that allowed it to completely submerge below the water line,
43:47and yet, as it sunk, these cans would rotate up and still maintain enough water plain to keep it stable.
43:56So, as the barge continued to sink, they stood up as the barge sank, and they held the barge steady,
44:02kept it upright.
44:03When the barge got to the bottom, those cylinders were flooded and laid back down in their cradles.
44:09This whole process of sinking the barge containing the capture vehicle took around two and a half days to complete.
44:16During this time, the GLOMER Explorer was waiting nearby to move in and pick it up during the evening of
44:21the third day.
44:30The next procedure would be to open the roof, and the divers would do that.
44:34They would go down and turn on the air motors and pull the roof sections open and then secure the
44:41motors.
44:42The GLOMER would come in over the top of the barge.
44:45We moored with a four-point chain mooring system.
44:49We did it at night, the actual transfer, to discourage divers.
44:54Once we got the doors open so that everything was exposed one over the other, then very carefully, we would
45:02lower the docking legs at each end of the HGE.
45:07Grab a hold of the capture vehicle and lift it up into the ship.
45:12That was a very delicate operation because we were essentially reaching our hands into the cookie jar and without much
45:22tolerance for movement four and aft.
45:26We did have some security boats that would interfere with anybody that was trying to go subsea.
45:35If they had seen the capture vehicle, I don't know what the heck they would have known they were looking
45:40at, but we didn't take that chance.
45:45With the CV safely inside the moon pool, the Explorer closed and sealed its massive doors and departed for nearby
45:51waters to complete sea trials and the first tests with the capture vehicle.
45:55When we actually got it in the ship and you could see its size in relation to the ship, looking
46:02at this giant crab that's going to be on the end of your drill string and be lowered down three
46:09miles away to do its job.
46:11And that was when it kind of hit me as to how big it was and how small my pipe,
46:16you know.
46:16After the successful Catalina pickup and subsequent second integrated sea trials, the end of May saw nearly all of the
46:24Glomar Explorer systems as well tested as they could be.
46:28We've tested stuff, we've had some failures, we've gotten comfortable with our failures and our ability to deal with them.
46:37But it was at this critical moment, 14 days before mission departure, that a problem arose that could not be
46:43fixed by the engineers or crew.
46:45On June the 5th, a mysterious burglary took place at the Hughes Sumer Corporation's headquarters in Hollywood, which stood to
46:52put the whole mission in jeopardy.
46:54In addition to stealing cash, burglars had also stolen sensitive memos and confidential files, possibly linking Hughes to the CIA's
47:02operation.
47:03But this could not be established with any certainty.
47:06Senior staff at the CIA were quick to inform the LAPD of the sensitivity of this matter.
47:13In the meantime, all the CIA could do was to keep their fingers crossed that none of these documents would
47:18be leaked to the media, or worse still, be given to the Russians.
47:23Finally, somebody has to say, we're going to go anyway, and everybody's well enough prepared, and I think everybody was
47:30eager to get going with the job.
47:32We sailed out of Terminal Harbor, and I was feeling somewhat nostalgic, and also somewhat concerned.
47:42I knew there were certain dangers involved. At the same time, I felt that I was undertaking some kind of
47:49unique adventure.
47:50I had a lot of apprehensions. I don't even know for sure what they were. For one thing is I
47:55didn't know when we'd get back.
47:57There were lots of concerns expressed, not only by me, but other people, and we were worried about the Soviet
48:04reaction.
48:05Would they board us? Would it be considered hostile?
48:08Soon, there would be meetings among the crew members to discuss any possible contravention of the laws of the sea
48:14and of international nautical agreements.
48:17Traditionally, it went back hundreds of years that military vessels were exempt from salvage, and that salvaging a military vessel
48:28or attempting to salvage such a vessel could be considered an act of piracy, a hostile act, an act of
48:36war.
48:36And the possibility that the Soviets, if they knew what we were doing, might attempt some sort of action, they
48:44might confront us.
48:45But it was not just the crew who were getting nervous about the implications of the mission.
48:50The Navy, amongst other departments, were becoming uneasy over insufficient plans of what to do should the Russians take action.
48:59On the 10th of June, just 10 days before the mission, an emergency meeting was held in Washington at presidential
49:05level.
49:07It was agreed upon that most intelligence missions violate some laws in order to achieve their objectives.
49:13The decision was made that the mission would go ahead, despite the risk that there could be political repercussions from
49:20their actions, should it come to the attention of the Soviets.
49:23It was a risk that had to be taken.
49:27There would be no turning back now.
49:32As the Glomar Explorer slipped out of Terminal Islands Pier E in the dead of night, there was one last
49:38function to perform.
49:39As she waited in international waters the next morning, a helicopter landed on the aft deck of the Explorer, carrying
49:46Curtis Crook and some of Howard Hughes' long time staff and dignitaries.
49:50All had come on board to transfer the ownership of the Glomar Explorer from Global Marine to Hughes Summa Corporation.
49:59This transfer of title was done not only for tax purposes, but also as a planned part of emphasizing the
50:05cover story.
50:05Finally, on the 21st of June 1974, the Hughes Glomar Explorer sailed out into the vastness of the Pacific Ocean
50:15and its rendezvous with destiny.
50:47In the 21st of June 1997, the Hughes Glomar Explorer
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