You have to see this one... Azorian: The Raising of the K-129
SBS: Documentary - Azorian: The Raising of the K-129
It was shown last year on our SBS channel. I'm not even sure were you could get it from.
For over six years, the wreck of the Soviet submarine “K-129” had lain in the dark abyss and shifting silt of the North Pacific. From its loss in March 1968 until its exposure in March 1974, the world was unaware that the Russians had lost a strategic missile submarine with its three one megaton thermo-nuclear warheads, and two nuclear-tipped torpedoes.
How do you raise a 1700-ton section of a sunken submarine to the surface of the ocean while being watched by a paranoid Soviet intelligence apparatus?
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The Soviet Government was equally unaware that the US had located and photographedthe wreck and was preparing the largest marine salvage operationin history to raise the K-129.
Project AZORIAN, which was eventually known inaccurately to thegeneral public as “Project Jennifer”, was the CIA’s audacious attempt torecover the K-129 wreck using a specially designed salvage vessel, named theHughes Glomar Explorer.
Representing the most modern missile-carrying submarine then inthe Soviet inventory, the K-129 offered the US a cornucopia of unique intelligencetargets, ranging from nuclear weapons to cryptographic systems andother equipment. But retrieving it required $1.8 billion (in today’s dollars)and more than six years to design and build the equipment that could do theimpossible.
To this day, Project AZORIAN is the deepest salvage operation everattempted and was so far beyond the cutting-edge of 1970s technology thatthe Soviets considered it to be impossible.
A brief flurry of press attention in 1975 resulted in a special presidentialgag order being put in place by then President Gerald Ford. This securityprovision has effectively blocked normal declassification systems andFreedom of Information Act requests to this day.
Finally, however, some mission members and senior engineers ofProject AZORIAN have stepped out of the shadows to help tell this dramaticstory in their own words. Utilising extensive, accurate CGI reconstruction ofthe salvage attempt, plus never before seen film of the actual recovery itself,and based upon contemporaneous documents, AZORIAN: The Raisingof K-129 provides the first factual and documented account of this uniqueevent ever made available outside the confines of US Intelligence agencies.
