Project Azorian: The Secret US Mission to Recover a Soviet Submarine

Hello everybody welcome back to Mega projects this one is all about a pretty insane ship that went down to the bottom of the ocean to capture another pretty insane ship it's project azorian heavily requested in the comments and let's get into it but first just want to say that Squarespace brings you today's video from websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business J house Squarespace through the link in the description below more on them in a bit [Music] it was one of the most audacious plans of the entire Cold War an enormous daring undertaken shrouded in mystery for many years salvaging a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean well it was thought to be impossible but in 1974 the US attempted just that project azorian borders on the unbelievable even in the context of the often absurd battle for Prestige between the world's two superpowers also I mean thanks to the Cold War we have so much to cover on Mega projects even to this day much of what happened on the Hughes glomar Explorer in the vastness of the North Pacific remains highly classified it is a story made for the Silver Screen more Jane's Bond than real life but sometimes fact really is Stranger Than Fiction [Music] in April 1968 the Soviet Fleet in the Pacific was observed behaving just a little strangely their movements were at odds with their usual patterns and Roots U.S officials determined that Soviet surface ships and aircraft were searching for a missing submarine in an area known to be frequently patrolled by Soviet Gulf 2-class strategic ballistic missile submarines and while the US were entirely right the Soviets were combing a search area for their k-129 nuclear submarine which had missed two consecutive communication check-ins but after weeks without any success the search was eventually called off ashes like now guys it's cool just leave the nuclear submarine down there I'm sure we'll be fine it'll be fine right the Americans however were not so easily put off their hydrophone Network a vast collection of underwater microphones in the Northern Pacific was asked to review their recordings in the hope that it may lead to the detection of an explosion or implosion somewhere in the Pacific using data from four separate locations the U.S Navy was able to locate an underwater event hundreds of miles away from the Soviet search area they believed that they had a good idea of where the missing submarine might be well within at least five nautical miles what they had heard was a low frequency recording of an implosion on March the 8th 1968 by cross-checking with other stations they were able to narrow it down to a location 40.1 degrees north latitude and 179.9 degrees east longitude that's not remotely near anything by the way and it's about 1560 nautical miles Northwest of Hawaii in July 1968 operations sand dollar got underway with USS halibuts a nuclear submarine herself departing from Pearl Harbor with a clear set of objectives find and photograph the missing Soviet submarine after three weeks of searching using slow robotic controlled cameras well they finally found it for the next few weeks the Halibut took over 20 thousand pictures of the Soviet submarine and it was these photographs that would eventually lead President Nixon to approve an outrageous plan which actually technically was an act of piracy they were going to pick up the k-129 and take it home with them [Music] if this is already starting to seem more than just a little bit far-fetched well believe me We've Only Just Begun the plan to raise the k-129 was said to have been concocted by defense secretary Melvin Laird and National Security adviser Henry Kissinger to study Soviet nuclear missile technology and potentially even recover cryptographic material that could assist with code breaking the Soviet sonar system was another aspect that the Americans were Keen to take a closer look at as were the mechanisms that enabled them to creep silently through the water the pros and cons were weighed this had the potential to become incredibly expensive spoiler alert it does and it could also provoke a major international incident if they were caught which you know would also be expensive but despite the obvious risks well they decided to push ahead several ideas were bounced around one which suggested creating a gas bubble that was so large that it would lift the submarine to the surface in any other story that might sound just well totally outrageous but here well it was just one of many outrageous ideas in the end a plan was conceived to build a ship with a mechanical arm that would essentially be able to lift up the submarine and bring it back up to the surface now if you've ever played that arcade game we have to pick up the prize with a mechanical claw just think about this being roughly the same except enormously more complicated and 4.9 kilometers Under the Sea President Nixon approved the plan sometime in 1970 and it would be the CIA who would lead the operation because of course it was the CIA but of course there needed to be a cover Story I mean what CIA plan in the Cold War didn't have a good color story this was where a certain Howard Hughes became involved The Eccentric billionaire Aviator business magnate film producer and well just about everything else Under the Sun had already been involved in several clandestine military projects over the years we even did a video on his H4 Hercules commonly known as the Spruce Goose which was built for the US government during World War II I'm probably gonna forget to link it below but if you search you know H4 Hercules projects you will find it Hughes announced the media with his usual flamboyance his intentions to begin mining the bottom of the ocean for manganese nodules these are rock concretions rich in minerals that are found on the ocean floor and let's be honest he had made several outrageous comments in the past and it actually pulled a bunch of them off so this might not have sounded quite as far-fetched as it seems except in this case it was just 100 fabricated while Hughes agreed to lend his name to the project he had absolutely no involvement Global Marine development Inc a leader in deep water offshore drilling at the time was tasked by the CIA with designing building and operating the Hughes glomar Explorer a ship that could pass as a state-of-the-art mining ship but was in fact every inch a submarine Salvage vessel I do wonder what Hughes got in return for this or was it just like the CIA owing him one which I imagine is you know pretty valuable on the 1st of November 1972 construction began on the 57 000 ton Hughes glomar explorer that would eventually need to retrieve a submarine laying 4 900 meters below below the surface it would be the deepest Salvage operation of any kind ever attempted and just before we get into their Salvage operation I want to tell you about today's sponsor Squarespace now a couple of simple things maybe you've got an idea for a website or a business that you want to start you know maybe even a podcast or a YouTube channel something like that well the only way to figure out whether that's a good idea is to get it launched get it out into the world and the easiest way to do that is to make a website and the best way an easiest way to make a website is with Squarespace now I know it can be daunting to go out and try new ideas because well it's always scary like oh people are going to like what I do I don't know but not knowing how to set up a website is no excuse and you should find out Squarespace allows you to create a powerful website for whatever you're up to you want to sell something online yes you want to do a podcast yes you want to do a YouTube channel obviously you do the YouTube channel on YouTube but you're gonna want a website to compliment it I'm actually building the mega projects website right now using Squarespace it might actually be done but by the time this web by the time this video is is out so that's exciting it all starts on Squarespace with a beautiful template that you can customize to your heart's content or you can start from scratch or move over an existing domain it's all very easy to do but just use one of their templates they're beautiful it makes it so easy plus 24 7 customer support in case you get stuck but you probably won't I've been building websites with them I don't think I've ever reached out to support not because it's not there just because it's easy head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squashbase.com forward slash Mega projects to save 10 of your first purchase of a website or a domain foreign on the 20th of June 1974 was truly a unique vessel but it looked perfectly Plain on the surface what set it apart was its large mechanical claw Lockheed who had built the claw for the project officially referred to it as the capture vehicle but it came to commonly be known as Clementine because apparently defense contractors like giving things nice names the capture vehicle was designed to be lowered to the ocean floor grabbed the submarine and then returned to the surface the k-129 would then be drawn into a moon pool which was essentially a flooded area within the ship after which the doors would be closed and hey Presto we'd managed to steal a Soviet submarine and I'll just add here that a moon pool isn't just technically a flooded room it's like one of those rooms which underwater where you have the pressure of the air and it makes like a us what looks like a swimming pool in a ship that's underwater so you can just kind of get into the water it's really cool they had them in that movie where they genetically engineer the Sharks to have big brains um deep blue sea fairly weak movie cool Moon more importantly the entire process would be carried out underwater away from prying eyes as I come to you shortly well it's lucky that it was the capture vehicle was raised and lured on a pipe string similar to what's used on oil rigs pairs of 9.1 meter steel pipes were strung together through a hole in the middle of the ship the claw would be placed on the end and then sections added incrementally until the desired depth was reached on the way up the reverse would be done with the pipes being removed one pair at a time when fully extended the pipe string totaled 274 separate pieces of heavy steel pipe the ship itself which cost 350 million dollars that's 1.4 billion dollars today to build actually looked fairly standard no doubt part of the ruse to not draw attention to itself while out at Sea well it'd be a bit bad if they were like yeah yeah it's a secret ship that's designed to pull up a nuclear submarine they just say paint it pink measuring 189 meters in length she was only slightly shorter than two football pitches her beam the width across the ship was 35 meters while her draft the height from the water line to the Keel was 12 meters she was powered by five nordberg 16 cylinder diesel engines pushing her along at a steady 10 knots this was really an unremarkable ship with a devious secret so yeah I mean normally on Mega projects we get into all of the details about the engines and the size and it's like no this was purposefully average the Hughes glomar Explorer arrived at the site on July the 4th the entire operation took over a month and because of the classified nature of project azorian much of it is even still a little hazy today but here's what we do know remember how I said that it was all kept away from prying eyes well the mining ship was visited by at least two Soviet vessels during its time in the Pacific we don't know exactly how it all played out but considering operations continued we can only assume that the visiting vessels had no idea that they were directly above the wreckage of their own submarine or maybe they did after the collapse of the USSR in 1991 information emerged that the Soviets had received a tip-off regarding the Salvage operation at the time the notion of raising a submarine from such depth seemed impossible to Soviet authorities and the warnings went unheeded the plot thickened shortly after when Soviet ambassador to the U.S and Natalie dobrinin began frantically sending messages back to the Soviet Union warning that a salvage operation was indeed underway way how much he believed will probably never know and while Soviet ships were ordered to be on the lookout for strange behavior in the Pacific the fact that they didn't know where the k-129 was meant that there wasn't really anything they could do now we don't know when but at some point the capture vehicle took hold of the k-129 and it began its steady climb back to the surface but disaster struck according to testimony from some of those on board several of the claws that made up the capture vehicle fractured sending two-thirds of k-129 crashing back to the ocean floor while a third remained still in its grip these fractures may have occurred because the claws were manufactured from marriaging steel which despite being incredibly strong isn't very ductile in comparison to other types of Steel the section that was eventually brought to the surface included two nuclear Torpedoes and possibly some code books though this has been debated however it's believed that most of what they hope to examine remained at the bottom of the ocean it was probably no surprise that the section that made it on board the Hughes glomer Explorer also contained several bodies there remains of the six Soviet Navy personnel that were recovered were buried at Sea in metal coffins out of fear of radioactive contamination the entire operation had been filmed by a CIA camera team and while the vast majority of the footage has never been released the short memorial service for the Soviet men was eventually sent to Russia after the fall of the USSR and is widely available online it's an oddly touching moment with both national anthems being played before the coffins are set adrift the bond between Sailors of all nationalities is plain to see the video was eventually passed on to the relatives of the men who had died on k-129 it didn't take long for the American Media to catch wind of the events after the New York Times was dissuaded from publishing by the government of Los Angeles Times jumped ahead of them and broke the story in 1975. if there was an expected retaliation of sorts from the Soviet Union never came needless to say that the Cloak and Dagger storyline didn't stop there a book released in 2005 claimed that almost all of the k-129 had been brought on board the Hughes glomar Explorer and that The Narrative of failure had simply been spun to downplay its importance however a recent documentary which includes testimony from those on board the vessel rubbished these claims the evidence suggests that only 12 meters of the submarine was recovered it goes without saying that the CIA isn't exactly commenting on this issue even 45 years later interestingly a very specific phrase has come out of the whole Endeavor shortly after the story broke in the media U.S officials began to be asked some very difficult questions the glomar response often used as I can either confirm nor deny takes its name from this and is now commonly used by intelligence services the military and even the police in the United States as a way of sidestepping issues that they'd rather not discuss in total the operation had cost 800 million roughly 4 billion dollars today making it one of the most expensive operations conducted during the Cold War not to mention one of the most complex the Hughes glomar Explorer experienced a difficult life after its covert Beginnings despite having an enormous lifting capacity the high costs associated with it made it an unattractive proposition and the ship was mothballed and put into Dry Dock in 1977. the following year she was leased to Ocean minerals company but it was almost 20 years until she was refitted in 1997 the ship received a major conversion swapping her heavy lifting capabilities for that of a dynamically positioned deep-sea drilling ship the ship was capable of drilling down to 3500 meters a conversion that cost 180 million dollars which is 270 million dollars today in 2015 it was announced that the Hughes glomar Explorer would be scrapped and on the 5th of June 2015 she arrived at a shipbreaker yard in China as far as we know the remainder of the K1 129 still lies at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean with the recovered section presumably somewhere in the United States we do love a good Cold War story of intrigue and Adventure here on Mega projects and this one has it all engineering the deception the insane efforts that both the USA and USSR went to in a bid to outdo each other and yet like many other Cold War Stories its exact details remain locked away hidden in the great Vault of political conspiracy that occurred in the second half of the 20th century so I really hope you found that video interesting if you did Smash that like button below don't forget to subscribe support our fantastic sponsor Squarespace who have a link below and thank you for watching [Music] thank you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 786,702

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Id: CqGTd3zQSqk

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020