"The bubble burst on Friday morning, February 7, 1975, with a front page story in the Los Angeles Times revealing that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had salvaged a sunken Soviet missile submarine." So begins the fascinating account of the attempt to raise the K-129, a Russian submarine that had disappeared in 1968.
The Russian submarine K-219 left its home base and then disappeared somewhere near the Hawaiian Islands. In a spectacular feat of engineering and spy craft, the Navy working with Hughes Aircraft designed a special ship, in the guise of a deep sea mining project, to retrieve the sunken Russian sub that was lying on the bottom 16,000 feet below the surface. How they did it boggles the mind.
The K-129 was a Golf II diesel-electric sub carrying nuclear weapons. The CIA knew exactly where it sank thanks to the Halibut (https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/42343) . The CIA was anxious to get it’s hands on one of those nuclear tipped missiles and any codebooks or other secret documents that might have been on the sub. Just one problem; it sank in 16,000 feet of water. In order to help hide what they were doing, the CIA contracted with Hughes, famed for concocting bizarre schemes, to design and build the Hughes Glomar Explorer ostensibly a deep sea mining ship. The plan was to use 16,000 feet of pipe connected to an enormous grappling hook to grab the forward part of the sub and raise it into a specially designed “moon pool”, as it was called, part of the ship open to the sea, to prevent anyone from seeing what they were up to. Josh Dean*** in his book on the project described it in these terms: "Imagine standing atop the Empire State Building with an 8-foot-wide grappling hook on a 1-inch-diameter steel rope. Your task is to lower the hook to the street below, snag a compact car full of gold, and lift the car back to the top of the building. On top of that, the job has to be done without anyone noticing.”
In a review of Polmar’s book by the Naval Historical Foundation, Captain James Bryant write that Polmar told him it was a very difficult book to write because 90% of what he knew was incorrect. “Bruce Rule** was the leading acoustic analyst for the Office of Naval Intelligence for 42 years. In May 1968, the Navy took the acoustic data and compartmentalized it so that not even the Navy’s experts could review it. Consequently, it was not until 2009 – forty-one years after the event – that Bruce’s analysis of the data from open sources determined that the K-129 was lost when two ballistic missiles’ rocket motors fired, melted the launch tubes and filled the boat with burning exhaust. This book gives details of the probable causes.”*
Of course, the sinking gave rise to all sorts of conspiracy theories. John Craven who had been very involved with the Halibut —among others like Kenneth Sewell—came to believe that the K-129 was in the process of launching a nuclear-tipped missile against Hawaii at the time of the submarine’s “explosion” and sinking. Palomar deals with this view in Chapter 11.
*https://www.navyhistory.org/2011/09/book-review-project-azorian-the-cia/
** Regarding Bruce Rule’s role, Mr. Role wrote a comment on the review by Capt. Bryant. I quote in full:
In his excellent review of “Project AZORIAN, the CIA and the Raising of the K-129,” CAPT Jim Bryant discusses this writer’s analysis of acoustic detections of the loss of the K-129 first completed in 2009 because the Navy compartmentalized the acoustic data so that not even their own experts at the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) could analyze it.
The Russian submarine K-219 left its home base and then disappeared somewhere near the Hawaiian Islands. In a spectacular feat of engineering and spy craft, the Navy working with Hughes Aircraft designed a special ship, in the guise of a deep sea mining project, to retrieve the sunken Russian sub that was lying on the bottom 16,000 feet below the surface. How they did it boggles the mind.
The K-129 was a Golf II diesel-electric sub carrying nuclear weapons. The CIA knew exactly where it sank thanks to the Halibut (https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/42343) . The CIA was anxious to get it’s hands on one of those nuclear tipped missiles and any codebooks or other secret documents that might have been on the sub. Just one problem; it sank in 16,000 feet of water. In order to help hide what they were doing, the CIA contracted with Hughes, famed for concocting bizarre schemes, to design and build the Hughes Glomar Explorer ostensibly a deep sea mining ship. The plan was to use 16,000 feet of pipe connected to an enormous grappling hook to grab the forward part of the sub and raise it into a specially designed “moon pool”, as it was called, part of the ship open to the sea, to prevent anyone from seeing what they were up to. Josh Dean*** in his book on the project described it in these terms: "Imagine standing atop the Empire State Building with an 8-foot-wide grappling hook on a 1-inch-diameter steel rope. Your task is to lower the hook to the street below, snag a compact car full of gold, and lift the car back to the top of the building. On top of that, the job has to be done without anyone noticing.”
In a review of Polmar’s book by the Naval Historical Foundation, Captain James Bryant write that Polmar told him it was a very difficult book to write because 90% of what he knew was incorrect. “Bruce Rule** was the leading acoustic analyst for the Office of Naval Intelligence for 42 years. In May 1968, the Navy took the acoustic data and compartmentalized it so that not even the Navy’s experts could review it. Consequently, it was not until 2009 – forty-one years after the event – that Bruce’s analysis of the data from open sources determined that the K-129 was lost when two ballistic missiles’ rocket motors fired, melted the launch tubes and filled the boat with burning exhaust. This book gives details of the probable causes.”*
Of course, the sinking gave rise to all sorts of conspiracy theories. John Craven who had been very involved with the Halibut —among others like Kenneth Sewell—came to believe that the K-129 was in the process of launching a nuclear-tipped missile against Hawaii at the time of the submarine’s “explosion” and sinking. Palomar deals with this view in Chapter 11.
*https://www.navyhistory.org/2011/09/book-review-project-azorian-the-cia/
** Regarding Bruce Rule’s role, Mr. Role wrote a comment on the review by Capt. Bryant. I quote in full:
In his excellent review of “Project AZORIAN, the CIA and the Raising of the K-129,” CAPT Jim Bryant discusses this writer’s analysis of acoustic detections of the loss of the K-129 first completed in 2009 because the Navy compartmentalized the acoustic data so that not even their own experts at the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) could analyze it.
I thank CAPT Bryant for his acknowledgment of my analysis; however, the basic conclusion (two R-21 missiles fired within the K-129 for 96-seconds each with ignition separated by 361-seconds) was so straight-forward (obvious) that it took less than an hour to come to that conclusion.
There were at least six acoustic analysts at ONI in 1968 who could have derived that assessment with the same facility. Such was the dark side of the Navy’s obsessive compartmentalization which prevented those involved in the approval of the AZORIAN recovery effort from knowing that the area within the K-129 from which they hoped to recovery crypto-equipment and associated documents had been exposed to 5000-degree (F) missile exhaust plumes for more than three-minutes.
Bruce Rule
Louisville, KY
14 September 2011
Those interested in irony will find it in https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/sinking-soviet-submarine-k-219-cold-war-conspiracy-189608. Note the similarity between 129 and 219. See also In feindlichen Gewässern. Das Ende von K-219 by Peter Hutchhausen.
