Lost Nukes of the Cold War (Full Episode) | Drain the Oceans

Cold War killing machines and lethal nuclear weapons abandoned under our oceans the thought that these doomsday weapons lie down there in the depths is frightening the terrifying reality has been hidden the keys to the truth of the Cold War lost under icy waters for over half a century imagine if we could empty the oceans letting the water drain away to reveal the secrets of the seafloor now we can using accurate data and astonishing technology to bring light once again to a lost world how did the cold Wars most advanced submarine end up shattered on the sea Flor a giant hand had just crushed it how close does America come to accidentally nuking Europe there was this terrible explosion big ball of flame and who stole parts of a secret Soviet submarine [Music] October 1962 the United States and the Soviet Union hit crisis point this is a red alert repeat Moscow installs nuclear missiles in Cuba President Kennedy issues an ultimatum withdraw the missiles or it's War a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union 31,000 nuclear devices if it starts the world would go up and smoke that's it crazy the Soviets back off but the world remains just one mistake away from nuclear [Music] apocalypse many flash points are hidden from view shrouded in [Music] secrecy now we can reveal just how close we came to [Music] disaster in the waters of Northern California a mysterious wreck could reveal the truth about top secret experiments at the dawn of the Cold [Music] War a giant object has been detected under these Waters Maritime archaeologist Dr James Delgado wants to know more more mapping the seabed outside the Golden Gate they found a big Target a very big Target was it a ship was it something more what brought this here why is it on the bottom James hopes the new fine could solve a cold war mystery the location of a ship lost for over 60 years USS Independence a giant aircraft carrier Imagine The Wreck of an aircraft carrier as big as this sitting on the bottom just off the coast of San Francisco unrevealed for so many years it's powerful it's compelling he sets out to explore the site with his team sending a remotely operated vehicle or ROV 2600 ft down a submerged Beast you got to go a little further brother a little more to the left this is an area where we would have had the name painted there's the E Independence you can see it NC e yes yes this carrier is a hero of the second world war it battled to recapture Pacific Islands from the Japanese it survived all that but it hasn't been seen for over half a century why is it now sitting in an unmarked location at the bottom of these cool Coastal [Music] [Applause] Waters using Precision scan data the waters roll back to reveal a staggering sight a World War II Colossus it looks almost new but on the flight deck there's evidence of death damage the surface torn buckled and bent and one giant Corner punched in completely on the hull strange scars steel plate creased like tin [Music] foil on the control tower Eerie details Japanese flags were were painted on this killboard for every enemy unit destroyed but now only white paint remains now this should be painted in different colors it should be red for example but it's not here and that's not age or seawater what could have caused such bizarre damage James picks up on a trail of evidence that leads him all the way to the fiery dawn of the Cold War [Music] bikini atol July 1946 behind a ring of lowrise islands nearly a 100 obsolete warships lie empty and abandoned one of them is the USS Independence this remote Pacific Lagoon is America's new Atomic test Arena it's less than a year since the first ever atom bomb attacks on Japan ended the second world war and the US needs to know more about what these terrifying new weapons can do on July 25th at 8:35 a.m. the first ever test of an atom bomb underwat 2 million tons of radioactive seawater blasted into the air the bomb punches out of the Lagoon with a heated core hotter than the sun shooting up through the heart of it also an Airborne detonation as big as the bomb at Nagasaki a mile and a half from the epicenter is the USS Independence a blinding flash irradiates her instantly vaporizing the red paint on the killboard the burst not only of light but heat took away all the other colors leaving only the white base coat then blast waves rocked the carrier shredding her flight [Music] deck and washboarding the steel around her ho this is all of those thousands of pounds of air or water coming right up alongside the ship and slamming into it bending it denting it Rippling it this is what an atomic bomb does to a ship the many warships destroyed at bikini carry a message this is the future of warfare with the Soviet Union working around the clock on an atom bomb of its own an arms race like no other will dominate the decades to [Music] come the drained wreck of USS Independence can tell us more of this shadowy confrontation but first we need to know why does she lie not close to bikini but California hidden under the waters of Northern California the wreck of the USS Independence 4500 mil away from where she was smashed by atomic blasts at bikini ATL how did she get here and why can our immense drained wreck provide a clue when you look all the damage brought by the atomic bomb while Grievous for the most part is above the waterline it wasn't enough to sink the ship the independence survives the atomic blasts but she's ravaged by radiation it had been coded in radioactive steam there's a near Panic that the radiation levels have not subsided much at all in the summer of 1947 the independence is towed to California James Delgado and his team want to know why this was here for a couple of years in they discover a link to a top secret Naval Research facility on the fringes of San Francisco Hunters Point [Music] inside the high security port a specialist team studies the radioactive fallout on board Independence their mission design a defense against nuclear weapons the key lessons underscored by study of Independence is to just get scarier to build more weapons to bring more of them into play inure short proliferation but a question remains after almost 4 years at Hunter's Point the US Navy scuttles Independence and the wreck is nowhere near where contemporary news stories claim she is we found it only 30 m offshore more than 100 Mil miles away from where reports said Independence had gone down which stunned us and we began to think why off the Waters of Northern California James goes deep inside the independence to look for answers as the robot drops down I have it zoom in again and again until finally I see exactly what they're hiding Now using Precision data we can reveal what he finds there in the hanger tucked behind a Hellcat fighter plane a stack of large sealed barrels on one barrel a side panel has rusted away and when James inspects it up close something catches his eye those are rubber gloves looking at it everything from the labs is getting packed in Barrel sealed in concrete not only from Hunter's Point but from the labs in and around the Bay Area they wanted to put these away out of the sight of prying eyes beyond the reach of Soviet spies they were afraid of Espionage the US Navy decides to take no no chances whether Soviet spies are operating in California or not what better thing to do then with your Atomic Secrets than to put them inside this big carrier in a location with all these nuclear secrets inomed within it The Battered wreck of the independence still lies off the California coast a chilling reminder of the dawn of the Cold War in the years that follow the two superpowers build huge nuclear arsenals and sometimes accidents happen the coast of Almeria southern Spain draining these Waters reveals a shocking sight a nuclear warhead more powerful than a million tons of TNT how does it get here and how close is Spain to a nuclear disaster Joe Ramirez is serving with American forces here in the 1960s it's the height of the Cold War and the US is flying nuclear arm patrols over Europe Around the Clock Operation Chrome Dome as it was called B-52 bombers each carrying four hydrogen bombs in Flight 24 hours a day Chrome doome maintains a constant nuclear threat against the Soviet block but to keep the bombers Airborne for as long as possible Crews must refuel in midair a delicate and dangerous procedure on January 17th 1966 in the Skies over [Music] Spain something Sparks an explosion four bombs complete with nuclear warheads hurdle towards the ground two without their parachutes the nuclear components are unarmed but the conventional explosives do detonate spreading radioactive plutonium over a square mile hundreds of American and Spanish Personnel scour the countryside and find three of the bombs but that's all we couldn't find the fourth one the US military needs to locate their lost nuke before it leaks dangerous radiation or falls into the hands of the Soviets after more than a week of searching the team still can't find the bomb then Ramirez meets a local fisherman he reports report seeing a parachute fall into the sea on the day of the accident it hit me we're looking in the wrong place we're looking for the bomb on land this bomb may be in the water but if the nuke is under the ocean where is it and what condition is it in in the last few years Spanish oceanographers have mapped the Mediterranean sea Flor the bottom of the oceans is dark but thanks to acoustical techniques we can see all the particular features with a incredible high resolution of the seab Bel of the oceans now with access to Dr Rivera's data we can drain the Waters of southern Spain exactly as it looked in 1966 and remove the sea from an American nuclear Calamity the Lost nuke 2500 ft down teetering on a cliff Edge a state-of-the-art hydrogen bomb a 100 times more powerful than the one that destroyed Hiroshima the nose cone dented but the bomb itself still intact the Americans need to find it first to get it away from this densely populated Coastline and to stop the Soviets from salvaging it for themselves American ships and divers scour the Spanish Mediterranean looking for a lost nuke they search miles of dark seabed for almost 2 months but find nothing you can imagine what it's like feeling your way around there trying to find an atomic bomb then on March 15th 1966 a remotely controlled submersive finally spot something when the announcement came through I [Music] said the submersible attaches a rope but as they carefully attempt to winch the bomb to the [Music] surface the Rope suddenly [Music] snaps all the US Navy can do is wait for it to hit the bottom the fail safe system holds and there's no chance of a defination but a nuclear weapon full of plutonium is lost once again Now using the latest data we can drain the Mediterranean completely to reveal where it [Music] falls a huge sea Canyon opens up nearly 3,000 ft deep and right at the bottom the nuclear bomb the difficult rescue attempt has just become near impossible one of the Air Force Colonels said if somebody had sat down and thought about a way to lose of a hydrogen bomb they couldn't have thought of anything more devilish finally the Navy sends a cable controlled robot down into the canyon and use it to grab the nuke but it snags on the bomb's parachute it's now completely stuck half a mile Under the Sea the only way to retrieve the nuke is to haul the robot up and drag the parachute and bomb along with it a delicate daisy chain for a 2ton nuclear weapon the man leading the mission actually fainted from the tension miraculously the chain holds these are two of the four thermonuclear bombs dropped on Spain on the left the nuke that journeyed to the Bottom of the Sea now safely stored in New [Music] Mexico to just see it lying there this item contain the power to destroy a city it's scary you know a cold war catastrophe is avoided but Operation Chrome doome is suspended 2 years [Music] later nuclear confrontation has moved beneath the waves 200 miles off the coast of New England draining the Waters of the Atlantic exposes the horrors of a deep sea disaster by the 1960s the Cold War has a new front line submarines armed with nuclear weapons try to creep into enemy Waters America deploys hunter killer Subs to guard against the threat the very latest is the USS Thresher powered by a nuclear reactor on April 9th 1963 thresher sets out from Portsmouth New Hampshire for sea trials just over 200 miles [Music] out it begins triing extreme deep waterer Dives thresher was pushing boundaries under the ocean The Men Who served on her are very similar to um space astronauts a US Navy ship called Skylar is in attendance a few hours into the trial the captain of thresher sends out a call saying the sub is experiencing minor difficulties then fragments of a garbled message a loud hiss and silence the staff aboard Skylark is not quite sure what has happened and continue to call to them and ask them to respond they continue to do that for some period thresher never makes contact and never resurfaces Lori Areno is 8 years old when the sub goes missing we were watching TV and there was a news flash a Navy ship was missing my brother went running out into the kitchen by the time I got there everyone was crying and I didn't know why but I just started crying and then little by little I found out that my dad was on that [Music] boat in 1985 deep sea Explorer Dr Bob Ballard sets out to find the wreck of the [Music] Titanic but his famous Expedition is a cold war cover story in fact Ballard is on a top secret mission to investigate the wreck of the USS [Music] Thresher I was a trained Naval intelligence officer the Soviets could track me with selling so we needed a cover Ballard deploys a submersible equipped with video cameras the once classified footage shows images of jagged metal Ballard's first glimpse of what's left of of the Lost submarine the only way to understand the scale of the wreck is to see it in the light of day A traumatic scene the sub is ripped into mangled pieces and Scattered across the seafloor water drips off a torn Rudder and lying behind it the conning tower on its side there's a blasted Air Canister and finally fragments of piping little else is identifiable so what we're seeing here is the debris field of the thresher but it's completely shredded this is Carnage the only big piece was a piece of the tail and even that looked like a giant hand and just crushed it so it was everywhere how did the USS Thresher end up like this it wasn't carrying [Music] Munitions its nuclear reactor isn't explosive and there's no evidence of a Soviet attack Ballard believes that only a force of nature can explain the damage pressure is a deadly force so we have a lot of experience with things really blowing up if a sub goes too deep the pressure of the ocean becomes overwhelming the whole structure will suddenly fail and implode an implosion is a gigantic explosion it's known as Crush depth but why would the thresher be so deep Ballard searches the wreck looking for [Music] clues in the vast field of scattered wreckage bent pieces of piping litter the seafloor some of these pipes would have carried water into the sub from the sea outside to cool the reactor and during deep Dives they become highly pressurized Ballard knows a leak from any of these pipes could trigger a shutdown in the nuclear reactor when it comes in it comes in like a jet and it can atomize in form of cloud so it's just really coming in when that happens the nuclear reactor automatically scrams he digs back into US Navy files and uncovers a survey of the thresher cooling pipes the report reveals that some of the pipe joints are weak and fail testing the message from thresher about difficulties now makes sense at 2200 ft below the sub Springs a super high pressure leak it makes a really nasty noise sounds really high pitched it would just go through You Like a Knife the reactor power cuts out the sub begins to fill with water they can't drive out they're dead in water but thresher should still survive studying the wreck Ballard can see components of a crucial buoyancy system compressed air canisters if the sub needs to surface the canisters blow into ballast Chambers and the buoyancy propels it upwards so why didn't the thresher do that the US Navy conducts an investigation what they find is chilling in the cold conditions of the thresher deep sea dive moisture in the compressed air freezes and blocks the ballast so it froze over they couldn't blow the hiss in the captain's final message is the crew trying and failing to blow the ballast the shocking Discovery completes the story of the last moments of the USS Thresher at the bottom of its Deep dive a powerful leak kills the engines and the icy deep freezes and blocks the ballast pipes without power and buoyancy and partially full of seawater the thresher is dragged deeper and [Music] deeper and they are now taking on water exceeding Cloud Stone they have no way on the hull creaks and groans the crew knows they are reaching Crush depth they're just going down they're getting deeper and they're crushing and that is a tough way to die because there's just nothing you can do at 2400 ft below the pressure is 70 times greater than at the surface and when that went it just just destroy the sub it'll just crush you like you're not even there from above the full terrifying power of that Monumental implosion is clear the wreck has been blasted across four square miles of [Music] ocean the first time I ever saw the pictures of the wreck it was a profound and Powerful experience the cold oldold war was not a war without [Music] casualties Americans are not the only ones to lose their lives beneath the wild waters of the Northern Pacific lie the remains of another submarine how does a Soviet wonder weapon fall victim to Cold War power games on February 24th 1968 a Soviet submarine leaves port in Eastern Russia k9's mission is to disappear beneath the waters off America's West Coast armed with three state-of-the-art nuclear missiles that can launch from underwater once fired the nukes are almost Unstoppable each one 65 times more powerful than the hirosima bomb the ocean itself has become weaponized it is the ultimate cloak in which you can hide and wait and then deliver death the whole aura about the nuclear submarines is to disappear from the radar of the opposite side two weeks into its Patrol in the North Pacific k129 misses a scheduled transmission home something has gone badly [Music] wrong a Soviet navy flotilla scours the Pacific looking for k129 but it could be anywhere in a thousand M sector of deep ocean I mean it's beyond needle in a Hast stack it's like needle in a thousand haast stacks there was a submarine out there that had been sunk and the Russians had lost it literally lost a submarine after months of searching the Soviets are forced to accept that their submarine and their nuclear weapons are lost so what does happen to k129 today a new investigation is uncovering a story of spycraft and subterfuge journalist Josh Dean has recently acquired images from a source in America that show parts of the wreck of the Lost Soviet sub the remarkable black and white pictures are hard to decipher but using expert analysis to enhance the images means it's now possible to reveal what remains of k129 3 miles under the Pacific Ocean the black steel of a coning Tower and a fractured Silo still loaded with a nuclear missile only some sections of the sub have ever been identified and a clue as to why lies here at the stern Jagged edges of peeled back metal The Telltale sign of a powerful internal explosion this is an image I never thought we'd be seeing k129 it's heavily damaged whatever forces were at play and I don't know if we'll ever really know this is an amazing and tragic image it's hard to think of anything more mysterious than k129 it's a unprecedented wreck searching for an explanation Dean digs back into Cold War history his research leads him to the tropical shores of [Music] Hawaii in the 1960s this row of innocuous looking buildings is a listening post for a top secret us facil called sosus sosus is a vast network of underwater microphones that stretches across the oceans of the world listening for the sound of Soviet submarines and tracking their movement Marine Acoustics Professor Bruce how has access to the Cold War data the Russians were building submarines that were coming uncomfortably close to the United States and so that motivated putting out these listening arrays in 1968 the Americans use acoustic technology to try and find k129 noticing the soviet's Frantic search they scanned back over their data looking for a marker and identify something far out in the Pacific analysis suggests it could be an underwater [Music] detonation have they found the sound of the explosion that blasts k129 into pieces sound can travel underwater literally halfway around the world so in the case of a submarine explosion that would be a pretty obvious signal if there was an explosion to this day no one knows what caused it but by triangulating the noise across the network the US Navy can pinpoint where the sound comes from here 1 and a half th000 miles Northwest of Hawaii for the US Military a Soviet sub loaded with nuclear missiles is a Priceless [Music] Bounty but attempting to seize k129 would be an act of War you can't just take stuff that belongs to another military there was real risk that going after this thing could start a war the US Navy closes the file and leaves the wreck untouched but someone does tamper with k129 and its nuclear missiles and the evidence is in the wreck some experts think that k129 is probably destroyed by an internal explosion deep under the Pacific Ocean and there's evidence for this theory on the drained wreck but there's something else too signs that something more than an explosion happens here at the front there's no trace of the jagged remains typically produced by an explosion and the nose itself is missing cleanly sliced off how could that have happened investigative journalist Josh Dean is determined to find out I think there are pieces of the k129 out there somewhere it's been lost for some reason and lost is never good Dean has been passed video shot in 1974 on board a ship called the glomar [Music] Explorer owned by eccentric American billionaire Howard Hughes the glomar claims to be a deep sea mining [Music] vessel but the video reveals something straight out of a James Bond movie it's mindboggling it's remarkable to see today that's footage that's never been released before hidden within the glomar Explorer is a giant cavity and a hydraulic claw the men on board are CIA operatives operation code name project aoran their mission is to recover sections of k129 and especially its nuclear missiles 6 years after the sub went down even most people within the CIA were not aware of the existence of this program the stakes could not be higher essentially The Claw is designed to drop down through 3 miles of ocean and retrieve the sub and its nuclear missiles in the murky 45-year-old video it's possible to see it down in the Deep preparing to grasp a part of [Music] k129 it pulls a 2,000 ton section away from the seabed and begins an agonizing three-day long Ascent to the ship two days into winching on the surface there's a sudden jolt those Engineers who'd spent a lot of time on boats thought like we definitely just dropped some weight something happened stressed from digging into seafloor one of the claws has cracked open only the tip of the nose remains most of what was in the claw including the nuclear missiles plunges back into the darkness the guys on the ship have to sit there and say we can't try again the claw is broken the CIA is forced to abandon the [Music] operation the dropped sub is still on the floor of the Pacific today along with its nuclear weapons nobody knows how many more Soviet Warheads are lost in our oceans the US admits that six of its nuclear weapons are unrecovered left behind by a conflict that abruptly ends in 1989 garbage off said we have tried to kill your submarines we have failed we quit the Soviet regime [Applause] collapses but the scars of the Cold War remain beneath our oceans nuclear weapons and radioactive waste litter the sea now the superpowers are rearming with with thousands of new missiles that can strike across the globe secret nuclear power games continue day and [Music] night

Channel: National Geographic

Views: 348,299

Keywords: national geographic, nat geo, natgeo, animals, wildlife, science, explore, discover, survival, nature, culture, documentary, perpetual planet nat geo, photography, full episode, Lost Nukes of the Cold War, Full Episode, Drain the Oceans, CGI, Drain the Ocean, Revealing the Evidence, Nuclear Secrets, Lost Nukes, Ocean Life, Marine videos, Evidence, Nuclear Evidence, Cold War, Marine Life, Life at the Ocean

Id: dqoqnJPGxA0

Length: 47min 22sec (2842 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2024