There was a wreck on the ship, and when the ship returned to the United States, the crew of the Explorer began to take it apart. Fortunately, when the wreck of K-129 was only 1,000 feet away from the Explorer, the Soviet tug set sail. The fallen pieces could not be retrieved, but the American crew continued to lift the remaining items.
#DEEP SEA TYCOON MISSILE SILO CODE#
Several hooks on the claws suddenly broke, and two-thirds of the submarine, including the missile silo and code room, fell back into the abyss. In 1977, the front docking leg of the GSF Explorer in Benicia, California, formerly known as the USNS Hughes Glomar Explorer.Īfter a few days of recovery, disaster came. The Hughes Tool Company will become the public image of Hughes Glomar Explorer, the 620-foot giant ship designed for one purpose: to raise the K-129 from the ocean floor and put it into the cargo hold through the “moon pool” on the ocean floor. Government Project Before, he agreed to help the CIA retrieve the submarine. Fortunately, it found the perfect side in Howard Hughes.Īs the oil successor and business tycoon of Texas, Hughes is known for being an eccentric hermit, which makes the cover story-economically risky to find Manganese nodules Using unproven deep-sea mining methods-seems to be legal. Lockheed was hired to make the claws, called the capture car. The CIA received Global Marine’s services in constructing and operating a ship sufficient to carry out the mission. The deep-sea mining industry is still in its infancy, but an American company, Global Marine, is known as the best manufacturer of marine mining vessels. On October 31, 1947, Howard Hughes was under the control of the Hughes airship (nicknamed “The Spruce Goose”) moored in Los Angeles.Īt that time, nothing had been found from a depth of 16,500 feet before, let alone an object weighing 2,000 tons. The CIA realized the value of a basically intact Soviet submarine, equipped with nuclear missiles, and immediately took the lead in carrying out the codename Azores Project.Įarly ideas included using rockets or underwater balloons to lift the wreck, but it soon became clear that the only way was to connect the K-129 to the ship. At least one, and possibly two more R-21 missiles appear to be still in the silo.
![deep sea tycoon missile silo deep sea tycoon missile silo](https://loveincorporated.blob.core.windows.net/contentimages/gallery/ef622a2f-a054-4cca-907a-a70b259126d9-58abandonedbases-pllokstine.jpg)
It suffered a catastrophic mechanical failure, but the most important parts of the submarine, including the missile silo, were basically intact. K-129 is located 1,500 miles northwest of Hawaii, 16,500 feet below the surface. After more than a month of searching, Halibut found the Soviet submarine. The Navy was able to narrow its search range to 5 miles and send USS Flounder, A cruise missile submarine that was reused for intelligence operations to find K-129. It found the sound of submarine explosions in the search area. The Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) is a network of underwater monitoring equipment used to detect Soviet submarines. The US Navy Submarine Flounder, October 14, 1965.Ĭompared with the Soviet Navy, the US Navy has a huge advantage. The Soviet search was not obviously worried about being detected by American submarines and aircraft, and it clearly showed that something extremely important had been lost-possibly a ballistic missile submarine. But after working in bad weather for several months, the waves reached 45 feet, and they cancelled the search. The Soviets even used full-power sonar to search for submarines and called K-129 through open channels. They are also joined by 53 aircraft with more than 286 flight times and more than two months of flight time. Thirty-six ships searched more than one million square miles in the Pacific Ocean. After it did not report for the second day in a row, the Soviets panicked. However, on March 8, K-129 still did not report.
![deep sea tycoon missile silo deep sea tycoon missile silo](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HhGcF5jTkD8/maxresdefault.jpg)
The submarine was ordered to operate in radio silence during the first two weeks of the sea voyage. On February 24, 1968, K-129 and its 98 crew sailed out of the base on Kamchatka Peninsula.
![deep sea tycoon missile silo deep sea tycoon missile silo](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/anno2070/images/5/5f/Missile-pad.jpg)
After being upgraded in the mid-1960s, it had a new electronic system and carried one of the latest Soviet weapons: three R-21 nuclear warhead submarine-launched ballistic missiles-the first Soviet submarine to launch underwater missiles. The Soviet project 629A class, called the Golf-II class by NATO in 1968, is a diesel-electric ballistic missile submarine K-129.