On 11th April 1968, the Russian Golf II class submarine K129 was lost some 600 miles
northwest of Hawaii. Despite an intensive search, the Russians were unable to find
the wreck. But using the SOSUS underwater sound detection network, the United States
Navy was able to locate the area where the submarine was.
The Golf II was not the most modern of Russian submarines, but she was carrying 3 SS-N-5 nuclear missiles, along with sonar and radar equipment. Perhaps most importantly, she would also have been carrying codebooks and encoding equipment. If these could be salvaged, NATO forces could decode Russian messages easily.
But the USN did not know the exact location of the wreck, nor if it was intact. So the special operations submarine SSN587 Halibut was sent to the area, along with the surface research ship AGOR11 Mizar. The wreck was soon pinpointed, but it lay in some 16500 feet of water, more than 3 miles down.
The salvage operation was headed by the CIA, with cooperation from the USN. As there was no submarine capable of operating at those depths, a specialist salvage ship was required. Reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes paid for the Glomar Explorer to be built, pretending that the 63000 ton ship was for deep sea mining. The Glomar Explorer would not lift the submarine on her own, however.
HMB1, or Hughes Mining Barge 1, was a submersible barge with a large claw underneath it. The claw was intended to grab the wreck, and then a hoist in the Glomar Explorer would raise both barge and submarine up into a moonpool inside the ship.
Extensive preparations were made, and it was not until 11th August 1974 that President Ford gave his permission to begin the operation, when the Glomar Explorer was already in position over the wreck. The operation was carried out over the next month.
When the claw had grappled the wreck, the lifting process began. Slowly the submarine was raised from the seabed, and when the Glomar Explorer was carrying the entire weight of the submarine, some 3000 tons, she was lying 7 feet lower in the water. The operation went well until the wreck was some 5000 feet from the surface. Then part of the claw broke off, and the wreck started to disintegrate, two of the nuclear missiles tumbling to the seabed below.
The exact details of what was recovered are still secret, but officially only the forward 38 feet of the submarine was raised, including the bodies of 8 Russian sailors, a pair of nuclear tipped torpedoes and several encoding devices. The bodies of the Russians were buried at sea in a bizarre ceremony which was filmed and recently released to the public.
Exactly what was recovered remains a source for debate. Some say that the entire wreck was raised, but it seems that the submarine would have been too large to fit inside the moonpool, even assuming that the story of the claw breaking is false.
Despite the apparant success of the mission, the public had no idea what was going on. But four burglars broke into Hughes office and stole thousands of dollars in money, as well as files about Project Jennifer, scattering some of them as they made their escape. Thinking the files contained business information, the thieves demanded a million dollars for their return. The FBI and Los Angeles police were brought in to recover the documents.
Most were recovered, but the tight secrecy placed on the theft was not good enough. The details were leaked to the media, and in February 1975 the Los Angeles Times broke the story of Project Jennifer to the world.