By Charles McClure

news@ltview.com

In April of 1968, the Cold War gripped the world with fear that a clash of that time’s two great superpowers – the U.S. and the former Soviet Union – could result in the literal destruction of humanity.

 

In that same month, something went terribly wrong with the Soviet diesel-electric powered submarine K-129, armed with nuclear warheads, and it sunk to the bottom of the North Pacific Ocean – not far from Hawaii. The Soviets quietly launched an all-out effort to find the submarine, but it was simply too deep to reach.

 

However, it wasn’t just the USSR that was interested in the K-129 – the Central Intelligence Agency discovered the submarine had gone missing, and was interested to find out why.
As intriguing as the situation was – it would become even more so when eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes set out to build the Hughes Glomar-Explorer (HGE) between 1973 and 1974. Constructed by Sun Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, the vessel cost more than $350 million to build.
By mid-June of 1974 it was ready to set sail. The media was told the ship would engage in marine geology and extract manganese nodules from the ocean floor. But the CIA had other plans for the HGE.
“It was built with a very large drill platform,” explained Lakeway resident Tom Smith during a meeting of the Men’s Breakfast Club last March. “It was unique because it would have an inside diameter of six inches – which is a pretty good size hole for a drill platform.”
But in fact, the HGE was outfitted for more than just drilling. It was equipped with a specially-designed claw system that could lift the weight of 17 million pounds.
“Numbers can seem meaningless,” Smith mused. “But that is the equivalent of 45,900 Cadillacs.”
Smith wasn’t referring to the scaled down Cadillacs of today – he was talking about the massive models of the 1960s, which were a status symbol of wealth and equipped with the latest in automobile technology.
Smith, who worked at Hughes Tool Company, wasn’t initially aware of the cover story. At first, he thought he was working on a deep ocean mining project.
Manganese nodules are a fascinating geological fact, and in the late 1960s-70s, it was thought that mining them could prove profitable. They are rock concretions on the ocean’s floor comprised of concentric layers of iron and manganese hydroxides. In fact they are microfossils formed around phosphatized shark teeth and basalt debris. The oceans of the world are littered with them.
While the mineral could have great value, many efforts to extract it proved too difficult and expensive as a practical mining technology. It costs a lot of money to mine at depths of five to six kilometers and transport the mineral to the surface.
But the CIA wasn’t interested in transporting manganese nodules to the surface – it wanted to transport the K-129 to the surface and mine it for its Russian technology in hopes of gaining a strategic advantage.
“There were experts who had the final say on every design aspect,” Smith said. “The testing was done within two miles of downtown Houston.”
It was during a trip to Pennsylvania when Smith came to realize the HGE was not being designed to mine manganese nodules. An area of the ship below the decks where rough necks typically change bits was to be refrigerated.
“This area wasn’t typically refrigerated – and that was my first clue that were not out to mine manganese nodules,” he said with a smile.
Instead, this was the area where the K-129 was to be housed after it was retrieved from the bottom of the ocean.
“The Russians had never found out exactly where it had sunk,” Smith said. “It was believed to contain the bodies of the crew. The U.S. knew the location and was pretty sure the Russians did not. The goal was to obtain the secret code books without the Russians knowing it.”
Retrieving a submarine three miles below the ocean surface is no easy task.
Sometime between July and August of 1974 the HGE discovered the submarine and managed to lift the front portion of the K-129. But something went wrong. According to one published report, one of the HGE’s specially-designed claws fractured, and the portion of the K-129 being raised broke into two pieces.
The critical section of the ship, where the U.S. government hoped to recover the code books, fell back to the ocean floor.
It is believed to this day that portions of the submarine were recovered – but exactly what remains highly classified. The Soviets believed the U.S. recovered torpedoes with nuclear warheads, operations manuals, code books and coding machines. Other reports maintain the U.S. never managed to bring cryptographic equipment or the coveted code books to the surface.
As for Smith, he was sworn to secrecy. He didn’t even tell his wife until decades later when the story broke in the Los Angeles Times and the basic mission became unclassified, which, he says, didn’t settle well with his wife. Still, only the government knows what – if anything – was recovered.
The Glomar-Explorer still sails the oceans today.
Beginning in 1997, and at a cost of more than $180 million, it was modified into a deep sea drilling ship, capable of drilling in waters between 7,500-11,500 feet – deeper than any other existing drilling vessel. It was is officially leased to the U.S. Navy for global marine drilling. At last report, the Glomar-Explorer was being used by British Petroleum Angola for drilling exploration and appraisal of wells – or at least that’s the official story now.
The Glomar-Explorer has long since passed into the pantheon of pop culture, inspiring a myriad of novels, including Shock Wave by Clive Cussler, The Ghost from the Grand Banks, by the late science fiction novelist Arthur C. Clarke, and The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross.
It’s initial mission has also been chronicled in documentaries by both the Discovery and History channels.