How the CIA Used Howard Hughes and the Glomar Explorer to Recover a Sunken Soviet Sub

After the Soviet ballistic-missile submarine K-129 sank in 1968, its wreck lay roughly 1,800 miles northwest of Hawaii at an almost unimaginable depth—about 16,500 feet. The CIA wanted to know whether the disabled submarine contained cryptographic or other intelligence of value. To conceal its operation in the tense Cold War atmosphere, the agency adopted an audacious cover: enlist billionaire Howard Hughes and pose the mission as a commercial ocean-mining expedition.

The Plan: Project Azorian and a High-Stakes Ruse

Under the classified Project Azorian, the CIA and its contractors built a unique vessel, the Hughes Glomar Explorer, which the public was told would harvest manganese nodules from the seafloor. In reality, the ship was engineered to locate and lift all or part of the K-129 for forensic and intelligence examination.

Howard Hughes's Role

Howard Hughes lent his name and corporate resources to the cover story. An eccentric, immensely wealthy industrialist with prior government collaborations, Hughes provided the plausible front the CIA needed to explain a large ship operating in remote Pacific waters without attracting Soviet suspicion.

Engineering a One-of-a-Kind Salvage Ship

Built over about two years at a cost of roughly $350 million (contemporary estimates), the Glomar Explorer featured extraordinary innovations: a deep internal moon pool, a massive capture vehicle (often described as a "claw"), an on-deck derrick and stabilizing legs. Engineers lowered the capture vehicle by joining multiple 60-foot pipe sections to reach the seabed and then reversed the process to hoist any recovered section onboard.

The 1974 Attempt and Partial Success

In July 1974, operating in relative secrecy and with Soviet ships nearby, the Glomar Explorer’s capture vehicle seized part of the K-129. During the lift, the submarine fractured; only a portion of the wreck came aboard. That section contained the remains of six Soviet submariners. Decades later, in 1992, then-CIA Director Robert Gates presented evidence of a burial at sea to Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Exposure, Fallout, and Legacy

Project Azorian’s secrecy unraveled after thieves stole documents from a Los Angeles office of one of Hughes’s companies, and press investigations followed. A 1975 Los Angeles Times article and TV reporting by Jack Anderson revealed links between Hughes, the CIA and the K-129 recovery, prompting congressional scrutiny and making further operations politically untenable. The Soviets also tightened surveillance of the wreck area. The Glomar Explorer never completed another recovery attempt.

Why it matters: Project Azorian remains one of the most ambitious and unconventional Cold War intelligence operations—a blend of cutting-edge engineering, covert policy, and bold deception that still captures public imagination.

Note on sources: Key public details about Project Azorian are drawn from declassified CIA materials, contemporary reporting, and published histories such as Josh Dean’s The Taking of K-129.