The Amazing Story of the K129

In 1968 began one of the most amazing stories in the annals of the Cold War and of the US Navy then the CIA. The end result will possibly never be known and is still shrouded in uncertainty and mystery. This is the main belief as to what happened.

The Soviet Golf Class 2 Nuclear Missile submarine, the K129,, was on patrol, not far from Hawaii. She had been picked up by the American SOSUS warning net (see email at base of page) long before and was being tracked and listened to on shore. The K129 crept nearer and nearer towards Hawaii, alarming American officials. She was armed with nuclear missiles and could possibly strike at any time. Suddenly something went horribly wrong. K129 had failed to transmit at a defined time! There was a theory that she had been involved in a collision with the American sub USS Skate, but Skate's damage when she "limped" into Yokohama was too light to have been damaged by another sub and was attributed to ice damage.

The Soviet Navy ran a search and rescue operation but had no idea where the K129 was - the Americans knew almost exactly where she was and soon a plot was being hatched to actually raise her from the seabed. Halibut arrived in Pearl Harbour on 11 April 1968. The 68th Anniversary of the US Navy's first submarine. As the sailors celebrated Submarine's Birthday, an amazing detective story was unfolding. Dozens of Soviet warships had poured into the Pacific, moving slowly, banging away at the ocean floor with active sonar. Obviously looking for something. It dawned on the US that they had lost a submarine. Sitting, on station, off Vladivostok, the USS Barb (SSN 596) when the frantic search began. Barb's Commander had never seen anything like it. Four or five Soviet submarines rushed out to sea and began beating the ocean floor with active sonar. The subs were diving, coming back to the surface, and diving again. They made no effort to avoid detection, no efforts to hide. The airwaves were full of their cries, shattering the air around Vladivistok, in uncoded signals. "Charlie Victor Red Star Come in" "Red Star, come in" repeated and repeated. Barb received a message "Stay on Station". As USS Barb and US surveillance aircraft listened, it soon became clear that the Soviets had no idea where their submarine was. The fact that the Soviets used encoded "burst" transmissions meant nothing to the US. They noted that every time a submarine passed given points in the Pacific, coded bursts were fired to receivers in the USSR. A burst typically was sent when the submarines hit a deep sea marker just outside Kamchatka, another sent as they crossed the International Dateline, another marked their arrival on station. Every time the submarines sent these bursts, they were broadcasting to the Americans "We are Here!".

Searching through recordings, the Office of Underwater Warfare found what they wanted almost immediately - a Golf II Class submarine had left port on 24 February 1968. The sub had transmitted as usual until it hit the midcourse. Then the transmissions ceased. There was no message as it passed the 180 degrees, International Dateline. Nothing to say it had left deep water, nothing at all. Bradley, of the Underwater Warfare Office rushed the news to the US Navy; the Soviets had lost a sub, a three missile sub and that the Soviets were looking in the wrong place! What if the US could find the sub first? It was a goldmine of code books, missile keys and information on Soviet technology. Bradley also disclosed that he had the means to find this sub - the USS Halibut.

USS Halibut sporting her distinctive "Bat Cave" - Here shown closed ( The Bat Cave opened up, resembling Batman's mask, to fire a Regulus Missile - later adapted to hold surveillance equipment)

Halibuts Commanders Moore & Cook were rushed to Washington. Rear Admiral Beshany, Deputy Chief of Submarine Ops was waiting for them. With him was Albert Beutler, the supervisor of Halibuts clandestine espionage work. After a breifing it was announced that the Halibut was going to find it! They all then went to see the Secretary of the Navy, Paul Nitze. Halibut had been having problems with her equipment used mainly for finding soviet missile pieces in the ocean. But this was a submarine - a lot larger, easier to find! It took only a few hours for the US to decide to go ahead with the mission. The next step was contacting The SOSUS chief, Captain Joseph Kelly. His staff ran through a series of SOSUS records; all they found was a tiny "blip" - a little rise that indicated a single loud "pop". It was right in the region that Bradley decided the K129 had gone down. They reasoned that if the Golf had flooded before reaching the depths she would have reached the bottom without imploding due to the enormous pressure - the SOSUS signals supported this thought. They needed to know what a sinking diesel sub would sound like going down with hatches open, filling with ocean water, pressures equalizing long before the boat reached crush depth. The US Navy found an old diesel sub, one that had survived countless attacks in WW2 - now she was to be the sacrificial lamb. The sub died silently, which was as expected. Triangulating their data from other hydrophonic equipment that recorded the "pop" they determined that the most likely position was at 40 degrees lat and 180 degrees longitude. This put her about 1700 miles northwest of Hawaii, more than 3 miles down! Beshany, not convinced, however gave the nod, and Halibut was sent out to the spot.

The Soviet Navy learnt that a US submarine had pulled into Yokosuka with a damaged sail and periscope shortly after the K129 was "missing". This was the USS Swordfish (USN-579). Years later the Captain of the Swordfish, when he found out about this story, says that he had hit a chunk of ice in the Sea of Japan, miles from where the K129 had gone down. The folk on the quayside had not noticed the damaged periscope - all eyes were on Mount Fuji which looked particularly brilliant that day. Soviet Intelligence obviously had eyes not on a mountain! Halibut sailed on July 15th. Aboard, in the "bat cave" were Naval "spooks", intelligence gatherers, who knew nothing of their mission.

The USS Halibut, an old, unreliable submarine had been rescued from the scrap heap and re-equipped with delicate, expensive intelligence devices. Halibut deployed her trailing sonar gear, the "fish". Day and night, the Halibut trawled back and forth. In the "bat cave" tired, strained eyes trawled over miles of recordings - looking for "something" that should not be there! Every six days or so, the fish was rewound aboard to replace the still film. This went on for weeks. Then the "haze" was disrupted!!

The ships photographer burst out of the darkroom suddenly aware that he was not looking for a missile!! Certain he had found their target! It was a perfect image of a submarines "sail", or conning tower. The photographer was shaking so much, the Captain thought on the verge of collapse. The fish was sent down again, down to the spot captured on the film, down to where the sub lay, as "if parked there" 16580 feet down on the sea bed. Sonar and cameras ate every detail around. Just behind the Golf's conning tower there was a 10 foot hole. It pointed to a surface explosion; possibly a hydrogen build up from the charging of the batteries. The remainder of the sub looking virtually intact. Two missile silo lids had been blown off. In the first twisted pipes. In the second the warhead had completely vanished. The third was intact. Then the camera found something else - a complete skeleton of a sailor, lying alongside the submarine. One of his legs was broken. He had fallen 3 miles to the sea bed. The skeleton was of a young boy, he was wearing foul weather gear, so had to have been on deck when the explosion occurred. Something else was in the image - tiny carnivorous worms wriggled around the body they had already eaten. Nobody who saw those images ever forgot them and nobody on shore when they were brought home could either. After weeks of searching the K129 was located. The Navy went to President Nixon and said that it may be possible to glean some information from this. The Halibut had taken 20,000 photographs, still secret to this day. The images were rushed to the then new Director of Naval Intelligence who had taken the post whilst Halibut was at sea. This was the man who had been Naval Intelligence's Director of Collection! He had, years earlier, stolen a Soviet Mig fighter! During the Vietnam war he "obtained" a Soviet surface to air missile. He took possession of a Soviet missile in Indonesia and an engine from a Soviet plane crash near Berlin. Now he was going to "steal" a complete submarine he thought! He compared Halibuts feat as a "helicopter hovering at 17000 feet with a small camera at the end of a line taking pictures in dense fog". Finally President Johnson got to see these images and was "so impressed" Naval Intelligence congratulated themselves for months".

In Jan 1969, Nixon was sworn in as President, and Henry Kissinger became National Security Advisor. Kissinger showed the images to Nixon who was fascinated. News of this "fascination" reached the ears of the CIA. The CIA demanded that they take over from the Navy and argued with Nixon to this purpose. Richard Helms, Director of the CIA, began to engineer a take over of the whole project. He did this CIA style - need I say more? The apparent infighting and backstabbing is not, however, for this page.

The CIA won and their first idea was to send mini subs to grab a warhead and the safe containing the codes. Also required were the submarines "burst" transmitters to enable the US to decode everything intercepted. They already knew every nut and bolt on these "old" Golf II subs from surveillance images. They thought they could blast open a small doorway and just go in. Eventually, the CIA decided that they were going to pinch the "whole damn sub". Craven and Bradley were dumbstruck - "the thing will be as brittle as a sandcastle, hitting bottom at 100 knots or more, accelerating at 70 feet per second" Touch it hard enough and it will disintegrate". Bradley was right but the CIA held the "real power" in Washington usually getting what it wanted. However the Chief of Naval Operations, Thomas Moorer loved big, bold, technological projects and was captivated by the CIA plan. Nixon awarded the USS Halibut the Presidential Unit Citation; the highest submarine award possible.

Nixon approved the plan and Defence Secretary Melvin Laird commissioned Howard Hughes to help. Codenamed "Project Jennifer". His answer was the Glomar Explorer, 2 years in the building, with which it was planned to lower a giant grab 5km to the seabed and pick up the submarine, raise it to the surface, and hide it within the confines of a huge water filled hold known on board as the moon pool. The floor of the moon pool opened directly into the sea.

Two crews manned the Glomar Explorer, the oil derrick men on the decks, and hidden within the ship, CIA operatives, who would actually operate the grab. In 1974 everything was in place to begin the operation. Something went wrong when a building belonging to the now totally deranged Howard Hughes was broken into by 4 masked men who stole, not only money, but classified documents. One of these documents detailed the entire operation! The Soviets actually did find out about this when a note was pushed through the door of the Soviet Embassy in Washington. This was relayed back to Moscow who did not really believe it, the technology was way beyond their capabilities. It was decided to go ahead with the mission although the Americans knew about the compromise.

Nevertheless, The Glomar Explorer set sail and, using elaborate thrusters, stationed herself above the K129. The oil men started to piece together the masses of piping, which went down into the centre of the ship. Here the CIA attached the grab to the pipes, opened the doors, and the whole thing began to head for the sea bed. 3 days later, they arrived over the sub.

The giant grab clinched the main part of the submarine and, dropping counter weights, began the long haul to the surface. At one stage, part of the grab fractured and sheared away. This snapped off part of the submarine, and a nuclear missile was released to fall harmlessly to the seabed. The submarine was raised up into the bowels of the ship, the doors closed and the ship returned to its port at Long Beach, California. Eye witnesses, in the dead of night, claimed that scores of lorries drove to the ship and left, loaded, going separate ways. Nothing is known about what happened to whatever it was they brought up.

The story leaked and the press were hounding Washington. The CIA Boss at the time admitted to a Congressional Hearing they had brought up pieces of the submarine, including 6 bodies, which were given a videoed Soviet Naval Burial. The film of this burial was later given to Russian President Boris Yeltzin after the Cold War had ended as a gesture, by the CIA director, of reconciliation. Yeltzin cried when he saw the video. At the time of the press leak Moscow made no comment to the newspaper stories and, behind the scenes, asked the then President, Gerald Ford, to hush it from their side and the Russians would do the same. Ford readily agreed. Russia publicly announced that as all their submarines were in port, they could not have lost one. They made no further comment and nothing else was heard from either side on the matter.

CNN) (Footnote from pages of CNN) Nov 10 1996 -- Midnight covert operations at sea. A lost nuclear submarine. An eccentric and reclusive billionaire. These aren't elements from a Cold War spy novel, but from the real-life history of a massive ship that is now getting a new lease on life. The Glomar Explorer is an impressive vessel, 618 feet long and with a giant cargo claw that can lift thousands of tons from the ocean floor. It was built for tycoon Howard Hughes, who would use it to pluck minerals from the ocean floor. Or so the world was told.

In 1968, a Soviet submarine, designated K129, blew up and sank. It lay nearly 20,000 feet below the ocean's surface until 1974, when the CIA used the Explorer to recover part of the sub. Though the ship's cover was blown, the mission was reportedly an intelligence coup, recovering Soviet nuclear warheads and code books and hoisting a large portion of the sub into the ship's massive "moon well." The crew also recovered the remains of six Soviet sailors, who were given a solemn, traditional burial at sea with a U.S. Navy chaplain presiding. Details of the burial -- and a video that recorded the ceremony -- were not revealed to the Soviet or Russian government until 1992, when then-CIA director Robert Gates visited Moscow and presented the tape to Boris Yeltzin. Like many cold warriors, the Glomar Explorer has received new orders. The Explorer, which resembles a floating oil derrick, will become just that. Global Marine, the company that originally built the ship for the U.S. Navy, is now converting it into a mobile drilling platform. New drilling ships cost $270 million; retrofitting the Explorer is expected to save $100 million. Eleven thousand tons of metal will be stripped from the Explorer's decks, but some of the shroud of secrecy remains. Global Marine's Tom Covellone is terse: "Our contract with the government is such that we can't discuss its history."

I recommend a book called "Blind Man's Bluff" by Sherry Sontag & Christopher & Annette Drew, in which is related the whole story of the US Submariner's "Cold War" and also contains information relating to K129. Published in the UK by Arrow Books.

The following item was sent to me by its author Tom Docherty in November 2004. It was written for The Sub Committee Report Magazine. September 2002 Edition. Reproduced here with the author's permission. http://subcommittee.com/

I like the image of the "silent drive system" above - I assume its provided by Dunlop Rubber Co!!

March 06: Following an email which claimed all sorts of "conspiracy theories" and "facts" that are unsubstantiated, I took the liberty of contacting GCHQ here in the UK for an opinion based on their extensive Intelligence knowledge of the world and received this reply: The ‘chat room debate’ (?) on the idea that the Soviet submarine that sank in the Pacific in 1968 was intending to attack Pearl Harbour (or some other American location) sounds equally fantastic. We are not aware of any official American or Russian statement on the sinking or on the alleged later American attempts to recover the submarine (although the latter has been described so many times, and with such a wealth of detail, that it would be surprising if there were not some truth in it). Basically they admit that they think there were attempts to recover a submarine but that it was NOT hell bent on an attack on Pearl Harbour. Something as potentially devastating as a nuclear attack on an American base would have echoed around all the Intelligence community with the same effects as the Twin Towers Disaster Mass Murders in New York. Although conspiracies won't go away, I am reasonably satisfied that this was not a "rogue attack" by a renegade Soviet madman a la Hunt for Red Oktober style! But, then again, who am I? Just an amateur researcher.

In October 2007, a Randal Robinson pointed me in the direction of this site:

Stalking the Sea Shadow
Photographing the Navy’s “Stealth Ship”

Overview
An attempt to photograph the Navy's "stealth ship" inside its floating drydock in the San Diego Bay. The story of the HMB-1 and the Sea Shadow are interesting because they demonstrate how massive, highly unusual infrastructures can be "hidden in plain sight." In this case, the stealth ship has been hidden in plain sight for over 20 years in Redwood City, Long Beach, San Francisco, and San Diego.

History
On November 4, 1982, the Associated Press reported that “the world's first fully submersible drydock, built as part of a CIA plan to raise a sunken Soviet sub, [was] being claimed by the Navy for a new secret project.” The submersible drydock that the article referred to, called the HMB-1, for Hughes Mining Barge 1, was to be moved from the Todd Shipyards in San Francisco to Redwood City for a “Lockheed Missiles and Space Co. project ‘in which the Navy has an interest.’”

The entire career of the HMB-1 had been synonymous with secret programs: it had been built through the Howard Hughes Company for the CIA to use in a top-secret mission to raise a Soviet Submarine that had sunk off the coast of Hawaii. Working in tandem with the Glomar Explorer ship, the HMB-1 housed a giant claw to raise the ill-fated sub, and the remains of the sub would stay hidden in the HMB-1 once it had been raised (note: the Speculative Archive’s film refers to these events). When the CIA mission was over, the HMB-1 was given to the National Park Service, who hoped to raise funds by leasing the barge out. But in 1982, the Department of the Interior ordered the barge handed over to the Navy for a new secret project.

We now know what that project was: a bizarre-looking stealth ship whose existence wouldn't’t be revealed by the Navy until 1993. In the late 70s, Lockheed had developed a computer program called “ECHO 1” that could calculate radar-cross-sections (radar returns) for simple shapes. They’d used ECHO 1 to design a secret “stealth fighter” for the Air Force, and planned to do the same for the Navy. Lockheed and the Navy determined that the HMB-1 was the perfect place to assemble the secret stealth ship because it was totally enclosed and mobile. It would serve as a giant, floating, “secret base” for the ship that they’d call the Sea Shadow.

Once the Sea Shadow was assembled, it was taken inside the HMB-1 to Long Beach, where it was tested nightly off the coast of San Nicolas island. Each day, the Sea Shadow sat inside the HMB-1 in the Long Beach harbor. The ship was deactivated from 1986 to 1993, when the Navy revealed the existence of the ship because they wanted to conduct daylight tests.

The Sea Shadow is now docked in San Diego, still housed in the HMB-1.

Photographing the Sea Shadow

In order to photograph the Sea Shadow, the HMB-1’s exact location had to be determined. This was done with the help of publicly-available satellite imagery (Image 1 below). Next was the problem of identifying an appropriate viewing spot from public land. After studying a map of San Diego, a number of potential viewing sites were identified. What appeared to be the most promising site was a sliver of land squashed between a nature preserve and a navy base.

When we arrived at the spot, we attached a camera to a high-powered spotting scope. Across the bay, we could see the HMB-1, and its front door was open. Nevertheless, we could not identify the Sea Shadow in the darkness of the drydock. By overexposing some of the shots, however, we were able to capture the outline of the Sea Shadow inside the open door of the HMB-1. (Image 2 below).

May 2008: I received an email from an "american submariner": SOSUS did not detect the K-129 going out on patrol. The USS BARB (SSN-596) was sitting at the mouth of Petropavlosk when the K-129 went on patrol. The BARB shadowed K-129. The K-129 transited on the surface in rough weather while the BARB trailed it submerged with nary a ripple. The BARB at the time was the flagship for the Commander Submarines Pacific. It had the latest supersecret (at that time) PUFFS sonar. Range and bearing could be obtained without sending out a ping. The BARB was not sitting off Vladivostok when "…the frantic search began." You ever wonder how amazing it was that the location of the K-129 was "found?" It's a real wonder how VADM Kauderer (then CDR Kauderer, skipper of the BARB) has got away with his story of sitting off Vladivostok. Kauderer went on to become a 3 star admiral, undoubtedly based on merit, but also because of his knowledge. I was on board the USS BARB. When we left on patrol January 30th our hull numbers were painted out, the messenger buoys were welded closed, and demolition charges were placed in two different places about the boat. “Spooks” came aboard (electronic and language intelligence gatherers). The crew didn’t know the destination but we were bound for Petropavlosk. Most of the patrol was spent at the mouth of the harbor recording the coming and going of ships from Petro and, of course, gathering electronic intelligence. When the K-129 left port our mission was to shadow it to its station and to sink it if it prepared to launch missiles. We did not sink the K-129. It’s sinking was as reported. We returned to Pearl Harbor the night of April 10 and the patrol report (chained to the wrist for security) was delivered immediately. As for why CDR Kauderer became VADM Kauderer that is, of course, speculation. The rest is fact. The XO at the time LCDR Richard Charles went on to become CO of the USS PARCHE. It was well known for its clandestine missions. (I am very grateful for this bit of info. Thanks.)