CIA - secret on the ocean floor

I saw this article on the BBC today:-

www.bbc.co.uk...

A missing Russian nuclear sub, a secret CIA plot to steal it, inventing a whole industry as a smokescreen and nearly succeeding. It even has the legendary Howard Hughes involved.

It really is an amazing story leading to the creation of some crazy mining tech - I want the drilling rig!

Makes you wonder - what’s Elon Musk a smokescreen for!

Anyway enjoy, it was one of my most interesting reads since discovering the story of the film The Conqueror featuring John Wayne..... well that and The Great Beer Flood of 1814!

Bob

a reply to: DrBobH

Nice find just saw it too.In the John Wayne movie "The Conqueror" is that the one where he forgets to take his wrist watch off in one sceen & no one picked up on it until it was too late?

a reply to: ericendtimes

Where to start with The Conqueror - John Wayne playing Genghis Khan. Filmed near Los Alamos and the whole set was massively radioactive with pictures of him playing with a Geiger counter. It was a Howard Hughes film and it was crap so they reshot loads of scenes elsewhere. That meant digging up the radioactive sand from the original set. Most of the cast died of cancer, the film bombed, bankrupted the studio and HH watched it every night in the dark as penance until he died.

Is a brief summary from memory

a reply to: DrBobH

TY.Thats what I remembered as well but been a decade or two since I viewed film.

a reply to: DrBobH

The story I read about the sub today did not have a conclusion to it.It said sub was 3 miles down but did we retrieve it or what we wanted from it or not.Maybe you got better story than me.

a reply to: ericendtimes

The sub broke up in rough seas just short of the ship, front end retrieved but the back half with the nukes etc sank. Never disclosed what they learned though but $500m in 1970s is a fair old sum

originally posted by: DrBobH
Makes you wonder - what’s Elon Musk a smokescreen for!

My guess would be space-based weapons platforms that include an atomic component, which according to existing international agreements and protocols are "illegal" for countries to put in place, but not "private citizens." Because who would guess that individuals could get rich enough to have their own space programs?

a reply to: Blue Shift

On the likely orbit that has been published I’m not sure it’d be much use as a weapons platform. However with the car being likely just a shell there was probably room for something. Could of dropped something in orbit or potentially be deoppping something off at Mars.

Either that or it was just a big ass firework of a distraction....

originally posted by: ericendtimes
a reply to: DrBobH

The story I read about the sub today did not have a conclusion to it.It said sub was 3 miles down but did we retrieve it or what we wanted from it or not.Maybe you got better story than me.

From vague memory , what I recall about the story from an article in the wayback machine: efforts to lift the whole sub from the bottom of the ocean failed, the sub broke up during the lift. Only a small portion of it was salvaged. The rumor was it contained unspecified 'nuclear materials', probably warheads 'possibly' from fish contained in the forward compartments.

Really vague memory of this .

From what I understand they were after the nukes, so it was considered a success.

a reply to: DrBobH

The story did not include the task of actually pinpointing the submarines location.
That task fell to the USS Halibut.
The Halibut also participated in Operation Ivy Bells, where they placed a tap on an undersea cable used by the Soviets to transmit military messages.

This is an old story. The book that broke the story is Blind Man's Bluff which was first published in 1998--twenty years ago. And there was a movie, here:

Thanks I just skimmed the article but I really liked their use of graphics and the layout is innovative. Good web design.

originally posted by: ericendtimes
a reply to: DrBobH

The story I read about the sub today did not have a conclusion to it.It said sub was 3 miles down but did we retrieve it or what we wanted from it or not.Maybe you got better story than me.

the official story is that the sub broke but we got a chunk and the info we found (one of the engineer's technical diary) made it worthwhile.
one theory is that they didn't retrieve much and the whole thing was a waste.
another theory is that we did get a huge chunk, including a nuke, and didn't want anyone to know.

spooks being spooks.

oops double post sorry

a reply to: DrBobH


Awesome read OP. Great find ! I am off to read about the conqueror now

From memory the crew that were recovered from the sub were buried at sea with full military honours according to soviet navy traditions, and the name 'moonpool' came from the central lifting area of the vessel doing the recovery, some guy saw the moon reflected in the pool and gave it that name.
'The pool' in question was an open shaft through the centre of the vessel with the sea at the bottom, where the lifting cables dropped through down to the lifting grapples. The vessel was purpose built just for that job, I have no idea where it is now, or who owns it.

There is a story that claims that the K-129 was going to fire a nuke at pearl harbor Hawaii and it was though that the russian planed to blame it on the Chinese.
sites.google.com...

The US recovered more in the sub then claimed as they got the sail with the ships bell and one of the three nuclear missiles from the sub.
Years later the US government turned over the ships bell to the russians.
www.reddit.com...

The third missile was missing as it had failed a launch and sunk the sub and it was claimed that the sub missiles were set so they would fail is fired without the real orders to launch.

a reply to: pikestaff

It was modified in the 90s to be a deep sea drill ship, and was sent to a Chinese shipyard in 2015 to be scrapped.

a reply to: ANNED

The US gave the Soviet Union Permissive Action Link technology for their missiles. All nuclear weapons are equipped with a PAL system.