Project Azorian
Project Azorian was also called “Jennifer” by the CIA due to the top-secret nature of the project. In 1974 the CIA wanted to recover the Soviet submarine K-129 from the floor of the Pacific Ocean. K-129 was sunk in 1968 and fell to the ocean floor 1,560 nautical miles northwest of Hawaii. It was a project that was not only very secretive but also one of the most expensive covert operations ever attempted by the CIA.
After the K-129 sank the Soviets spent weeks trying to find the sub but never succeeded. The gave up and in July 1968, the United States Navy began Operation Sand Dollar which was their own mission to find the sunken sub and photograph it. The USS Halibut was able to locate the K-129 in three weeks using robotic remote cameras. They spent several weeks taking more than 20,000 photos of the top secret Soviet submarine. It was based on these photographs that in 1970, that Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger decided to attempt to recover the sub.
The cost of the project was $800 million in 1974 or $3.9 billion in 2016 dollars. Part of the reason why the mission was so expensive was due to the fact that a ship had to be built for the specific purpose of bringing the large submarine up from the depths. The Hughes Glomar Explorer was built with the cover story of the ship being built to mine manganese nodules from the bottom of the ocean. The K-129 rested at a depth of 16,000 feet and would therefore be the deepest salvage operation ever attempted.
The Hughes Glomar Explorer was built with a large mechanical claw known as “Clementine” which was meant to grab the targeted nuclear portion of the submarine and bring it to the surface. However, during the mission the “Clementine” suffered catastrophic failure an only part of the submarine was recovered. The recovered portion had two nuclear torpedoes and there were rumors of code books and other relevant materials being recovered that kept the mission from being a complete failure. The bodies of crew members were also found and given military burials at sea in metal caskets (due to radioactivity concerns).