Secretly Recovering a Soviet Sub

In early 1968 the Soviets lost a sub with nuclear missiles aboard.  They launched an intensive search, but couldn’t locate it.  But the U.S. had a pretty good idea where it was due to our Atlantic listening system.  The challenge was, how to secretly recover it.  The CIA took charge and worked with Global Marine, Hughes Tool Company and Lockheed to construct a special vessel to raise the sub from a depth of about three miles.  The vessel was called USNS Hughes Glomar Explorer (shown in the above photo) and it eventually recovered part of the sub in 1974.  I was reminded of a fascinating book I read years ago on this by a recent article on this amazing project.  Hope you enjoy it!

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