Soviet submarine K-129 (Golf II) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

K-129 was a Project 629A (NATO reporting name

NATO reporting name

NATO reporting names are classified code names for military equipment of the Eastern Bloc...

Golf class submarine

Project 629, also known by the NATO reporting name of Golf class, were diesel electric ballistic missile submarines of the Soviet Navy. They were designed after six Zulu class submarines were successfully modified to carry and launch Scud missiles...

) diesel-electric powered submarine of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, one of six Project 629 strategic ballistic missile submarines attached to the 15th Submarine Squadron based at Rybachiy Naval Base, Kamchatka, commanded by Rear Admiral Rudolf A. Golosov.

In January 1968, the 15th Submarine Squadron was part of the 29th Ballistic Missile Division at Rybachiy, commanded by Admiral Viktor A. Dygalo. K-129's commander was Captain First Rank V.I. Kobzar. K-129 carried hull number 722 on her final deployment in which she sank on 8 March 1968. After sinking, the Soviet Navy never found her wreck. The United States attempted to recover the boat in 1974 in Project Azorian, a secret cold war-era plot to raise a vessel from greater than 3 miles (4.8 km) below the surface of the Pacific Ocean with the cover story

Cover Up

Cover Up is an American action/adventure television series that aired for one season on CBS from September 22, 1984 to April 6, 1985. Created by Glen A. Larson, the series stars Jennifer O'Neill, Jon-Erik Hexum, Antony Hamilton, and Richard Anderson....

of commercial manganese nodule

Manganese nodule

Polymetallic nodules, also called manganese nodules, are rock concretions on the sea bottom formed of concentric layers of iron and manganese hydroxides around a core. The core may be microscopically small and is sometimes completely transformed into manganese minerals by crystallization...

mining.

Sinking

After having successfully completed two 70-day ballistic-missile combat patrols in 1967, K-129 was tasked with her third patrol to commence 24 February 1968, with an expected completion date of 5 May 1968. Upon departure 24 February, K-129 reached deep water, conducted its test dive, returned to the surface to report by radio that all was well, and proceeded on patrol. No further communication was ever received from K-129, despite normal radio check-ins expected when the submarine crossed the 180th meridian, and when it arrived at its patrol area.

By mid-March, Soviet naval authorities at Kamchatka became concerned that K-129 had missed two consecutive radio check-ins. First, K-129 was instructed by normal fleet broadcast to break radio silence and contact headquarters; later and more urgent communications all went unanswered. By the third week of March, Soviet naval headquarters declared K-129 "missing", and organized a massive air, surface and sub-surface search and rescue effort into the North Pacific from Kamchatka and Vladivostok

Vladivostok

The city is located in the southern extremity of Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula, which is about 30 km long and approximately 12 km wide.The highest point is Mount Kholodilnik, the height of which is 257 m...

.

This highly unusual Soviet surge deployment into the Pacific was correctly analysed by U.S. intelligence as probably in reaction to a submarine loss. U.S. SOSUS Naval Facilities (NAVFACs) in the North Pacific were alerted and requested to review recent acoustic records to identify any possible associated signal. Several SOSUS

SOSUS

SOSUS, an acronym for Sound Surveillance System, is a chain of underwater listening posts across the northern Atlantic Ocean near Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom — the GIUK gap. It was originally operated by the United States Navy for tracking Soviet submarines, which had to pass...

arrays recorded a possibly related event on 8 March 1968, and upon examination produced sufficient triangulation by lines-of-bearing to provide the U.S. Navy with a locus for the probable wreck site. One source characterized the acoustic signal as "an isolated, single sound of an explosion or implosion, 'a good-sized bang'." The acoustic event is claimed to have originated from near 40 N, 180th longitude.

Soviet search efforts, lacking the equivalent of the U.S. SOSUS system, proved unable to locate K-129, and eventually Soviet naval activity in the North Pacific returned to normal. K-129 was subsequently declared lost with all hands.

With the aid of SOSUS triangulation, American intelligence resources would later locate the K-129 wreck, photograph it in-situ at its 16000 feet (4,876.8 m) depth, and (several years later) partially salvage it.

Discovery and salvage – Project Azorian

In early August 1968, the wreck of K-129 was pinpointed by the northwest of Oahu

Oahu

Oahu or Oahu , known as "The Gathering Place", is the third largest of the Hawaiian Islands and most populous of the islands in the U.S. state of Hawaii. The state capital Honolulu is located on the southeast coast...

, at an approximate depth of 16000 feet (4,876.8 m). The wreck was surveyed in detail over the next three weeks by Halibut -reportedly with over 20,000 close-up photos- and later also possibly by the bathyscaphe

Bathyscaphe

A bathyscaphe is a free-diving self-propelled deep-sea submersible, consisting of a crew cabin similar to a bathysphere, but suspended below a float rather than from a surface cable, as in the classic bathysphere design....

Trieste II
Bathyscaphe Trieste II
Trieste II ' was the successor to Trieste — the United States Navy's first bathyscaphe purchased from its Swiss designers. The original Trieste design was heavily modified by the Naval Electronics Laboratory in San Diego, California and built at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard...

. Given a unique opportunity to snatch a Soviet SS-N-5 SERB nuclear missile without the knowledge of the Soviet Union, the K-129 wreck came to the attention of U.S. national authorities. After consideration by the Secretary of Defense and the White House, President Nixon authorised a salvage attempt. To ensure the salvage attempt remained "black" (i.e. clandestine and secret), the CIA, rather than the Navy, was tasked to conduct the operation. Hughes Glomar Explorer
USNS Glomar Explorer (T-AG-193)
GSF Explorer, formerly USNS Glomar Explorer , is a deep-sea drillship platform initially built for the United States Central Intelligence Agency Special Activities Division secret operation Project Azorian to recover the sunken Soviet submarine, K-129, lost in April 1968.The cultural impact of...

was designed and built under CIA contract, solely for the purpose of conducting a clandestine salvage of K-129. Under the name of Project Azorian, the salvage operation would be one of the most expensive and deepest secrets of the Cold War.

Leak and widespread media attention

Seymour Hersh

Seymour Myron Hersh is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters...

of the New York Times uncovered some of the details of Project Azorian in 1974, but was kept from publication by the action of the Director of Central Intelligence

Director of Central Intelligence

The Office of United States Director of Central Intelligence was the head of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the principal intelligence advisor to the President and the National Security Council, and the coordinator of intelligence activities among and between the various United...

, William Colby

William Colby

William Egan Colby spent a career in intelligence for the United States, culminating in holding the post of Director of Central Intelligence from September 1973, to January 1976....

. Months after the salvage operation was completed, in February 1975, the Los Angeles Times ran a brief story regarding the CIA operation, which led the New York Times to release Hersh's story. Jack Anderson continued the story on national television in March 1975. The media called the operation Project Jennifer, which in 2010 was revealed to be incorrect, since Jennifer referred only to a security system which compartmentalised Azorian project data.

During the covert operation, the Hughes Glomar Explorer was publicly believed to be mining manganese nodule

Manganese nodule

s on the sea floor. However, once the real purpose of Azorian was leaked to the media, the Soviet Union eventually found out about what happened. According to one account, in July–August 1974 the Hughes Glomar Explorer grappled with and was able to lift the forward half of the wreck of K-129, but as it was raised the claw suffered a critical failure resulting in the forward section breaking into two pieces with the all-important sail area and centre section falling back to the ocean floor. Thus, the centre sail area and the after portions of K-129 were not recovered. What exactly was retrieved in the section that was successfully recovered is classified Secret Noforn or Top Secret

Top Secret

Top Secret generally refers to the highest acknowledged level of classified information.Top Secret may also refer to:- Film and television :* Top Secret , a British comedy directed by Mario Zampi...

, but the Soviets assumed that the United States recovered torpedoes with nuclear warheads, operations manuals, codebooks and coding machines. Another source (unofficial) states that the U.S. recovered the bow area, which contained two nuclear torpedoes, but no cryptographic equipment nor codebooks.

The United States announced that in the section they recovered were the bodies of six men. Due to radioactive contamination

Radioactive contamination

Radioactive contamination, also called radiological contamination, is radioactive substances on surfaces, or within solids, liquids or gases , where their presence is unintended or undesirable, or the process giving rise to their presence in such places...

, the bodies were buried at sea in a steel chamber on 4 September 1974, with full military honours about 90 nautical miles (167 km) southwest of Hawaii. The videotape of that ceremony was given to Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

by U.S. Director of Central Intelligence, Robert Gates

Robert Gates

Dr. Robert Michael Gates is a retired civil servant and university president who served as the 22nd United States Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011. Prior to this, Gates served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and under President George H. W....

, when he visited Moscow in October 1992. The relatives of the crew members were eventually shown the video some years later.

Continuing secrecy and official objections to full disclosure

The K-129 recovery has been stated to have been a failure, recovering a small amount of insignificant parts of the submarine. However, the CIA argued in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that the project had to be kept secret because any "official acknowledgment of involvement by U.S. Government agencies would disclose the nature and purpose of the program

Glomar response

In United States law, the term Glomar response refers to a "neither confirm nor deny" response to Freedom of Information Act requests. There are two instances in which Glomarization has been used...

." To this day the files, photographs, videotapes and other documentary evidence remain closed to the public. A few pictures appeared in a 2010 documentary showing the K-129 wreck : the bow and the sail, with the missile compartment heavily damaged showing only one missile tube left attached to the structure.

Specific location

The location of the wreck remains an official secret of the United States intelligence services. However, Dr. John P. Craven points to a location nearly 40 degrees North

40th parallel north

The 40th parallel north is a circle of latitude that is 40 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane. It crosses Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, Asia, the Pacific Ocean, North America, and the Atlantic Ocean....

, and almost exactly on the 180th meridian

180th meridian

The 180th meridian or antimeridian is the meridian which is 180° east or west of the Prime Meridian passing through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. It is common to both east longitude and west longitude. It is used as the basis for the International Date Line because it for the most part passes...

. CIA documents reveal that it sank "1,560 miles northwest of Hawaii," and that the Hughes Glomar Explorer had to travel 3,008 miles from Long Beach, CA, to reach the recovery site. The International Atomic Energy Agency

International Atomic Energy Agency

The International Atomic Energy Agency is an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. The IAEA was established as an autonomous organization on 29 July 1957...

states that two nuclear warheads from K-129 were located in the Pacific 1,230 miles from Kamchatka at coordinates 40°6'N and 179°57'E at a depth of 6000m, and lists them as recovered. All three distances point to a location 38°5'N and 178°57'E, which is close to 600 nautical miles (1,111.2 km) north of the Midway Atoll

Midway Atoll

Midway Atoll is a atoll in the North Pacific Ocean, near the northwestern end of the Hawaiian archipelago, about one-third of the way between Honolulu, Hawaii, and Tokyo, Japan. Unique among the Hawaiian islands, Midway observes UTC-11 , eleven hours behind Coordinated Universal Time and one hour...

. The CIA gives 16440 and 16500 ft (5,010.9 and 5,029.2 ) for its approximate depth.

Explaining the disaster

The official Soviet Navy hypothesis is that K-129, while operating in snorkel

Submarine snorkel

A submarine snorkel is a device which allows a submarine to operate submerged while still taking in air from above the surface. Navy personnel often refer to it as the snort.-History:...

mode, slipped below its operating depth. Such an event, combined with a mechanical failure or improper crew reaction, can cause flooding sufficient to sink the boat.

This account, however, has not been accepted by many, and four alternative theories have been advanced to explain the loss of K-129:

A hydrogen
Hydrogen
Hydrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the symbol H. With an average atomic weight of , hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant chemical element, constituting roughly 75% of the Universe's chemical elemental mass. Stars in the main sequence are mainly...

explosion in the batteries while charging;
A collision with ;
A missile explosion caused by a leaking missile door seal;
Violence due to K-129 violating normal operating procedures and/or departing from authorised operating areas.

Reportedly, as many as 40 of the complement of 98 were new to the submarine for this deployment. The official account and the first theory could at least be plausible consequences of this situation, if true.

Hydrogen explosion

Lead–acid batteries vent explosive hydrogen gas during the charging process. If not properly vented, that gas could have accumulated into an explosive concentration. Still, submariners have understood this risk and had procedures to mitigate it for nearly a century.

Concerning the hydrogen explosion theory, Dr. John P. Craven, former chief scientist of the U.S. Navy's Special Projects Office and former head of the DSSP

DSSP

DSSP may refer to:*Dessert spoon, a spoon with a capacity of about 2 teaspoons*DSSP , a programming language*DSSP , a method of scanning objects into 3D digital representations...

and DSRV

Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle

A Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle is a type of Deep Submergence Vehicle used for rescue of downed submarines and clandestine missions. While DSRV is the term most often used by the United States Navy other nations have different designations for their vehicles.- Chinese models :The People's...

programs, commented:

I have never seen or heard of a submarine disaster that was not accompanied by the notion that the battery blew up and started it all. [...] Naive investigators, examining the damage in salvaged battery compartments, invariably blame the sinking on battery explosions until they learn that any fully charged battery suddenly exposed to seawater will explode. It is an inevitable effect of a sinking and almost never a cause.

On the other hand, at least one American submarine, , was lost off Norway in 1949 due to a hydrogen explosion in the battery compartment. Most of Cochino's crew was rescued and the cause of her sinking is therefore known.

Collision with USS Swordfish

During the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

, it was standard practice for U.S. Navy

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

attack submarines to pick up and trail Soviet missile submarines as they departed their home ports and moved into the North Pacific or the North Atlantic Ocean.
The collision theory is the unofficial opinion of many Soviet Navy

Soviet Navy

The Soviet Navy was the naval arm of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy would have played an instrumental role in a Warsaw Pact war with NATO, where it would have attempted to prevent naval convoys from bringing reinforcements across the Atlantic Ocean...

officers, and is officially denied by the U.S Navy. According to U.S. Navy sources, USS Swordfish (SSN-579)

USS Swordfish (SSN-579)

USS Swordfish , a , was the second submarine of the United States Navy named for the swordfish, a large fish with a long, swordlike beak and a high dorsal fin....

put into Yokosuka, Japan on 17 March 1968, shortly after the disappearance of K-129, and received emergency repairs to a bent periscope, reportedly caused by ice impacted during surfacing while conducting classified operations in the Sea of Japan

Sea of Japan

The Sea of Japan is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean, between the Asian mainland, the Japanese archipelago and Sakhalin. It is bordered by Japan, North Korea, Russia and South Korea. Like the Mediterranean Sea, it has almost no tides due to its nearly complete enclosure from the Pacific...

.

The seizure by the North Korea

North Korea

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...

n government occurred in the Sea of Japan on 23 January 1968, and the U.S. Navy response to this incident included the deployment and maintenance of naval assets in the area off the eastern North Korean coast for some time thereafter.

In response to Russian efforts to ascertain whether K-129 had been lost due to damage resulting from a collision with a U.S. submarine, an official U.S. statement by Ambassador Malcolm Toon

Malcolm Toon

Malcolm Toon was an American diplomat. He graduated from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University in 1938, and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Toon was the ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1969–1971, Yugoslavia from 1971–1975, Israel from 1975–1976, and the Soviet...

to a Russian delegation during a meeting in the Kremlin in August 1993 related:

At my request, U.S. naval intelligence searched the logs of all U.S. subs that were active in 1968. As a result, our director of naval intelligence has concluded that no U.S. sub was within 300 nautical miles (555.6 km) of your sub when it sank.

A news release in 2000 demonstrates that Russian suspicion and sensitivity concerning the collision possibility, and indeed their preference for such an explanation, remains active:

As recently as 1999, Russian government officials complained that Washington was covering up its involvement. One accused the Americans of acting like a "criminal that had been caught and now claimed that guilt must be proved," according to the notes of a U.S. participant in a November 1999 meeting on the topic.

Yet a picture from a Japanese newspaper, dated on the day USS Swordfish docked in Japan showed only a bent sail and a dented periscope.

An unconfirmed report states that K-129 was indeed trailed from its homeport Petropavlovsk

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky is the main city and the administrative, industrial, scientific, and cultural center of Kamchatka Krai, Russia. Population: .-History:It was founded by Danish navigator Vitus Bering, in the service of the Russian Navy...

by the USS Barb

USS Barb (SSN-596)

USS Barb , a Permit-class attack submarine, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for the barb, a kingfish of the Atlantic coast....

, which had been stationed off Petropavlovsk for an intelligence gathering mission. According to the report, the USS Barb had order to attack in case K-129 would prepare for a missile launch. The report further states that USS Barb witnessed the sinking of K-129, but was not involved in it.

Missile explosion due to leaking hatch seal

On 3 October 1986, the Soviet Yankee-class

Yankee class submarine

The Yankee class is the NATO classification for a type of nuclear-powered submarine that was constructed by the Soviet Union from 1968 onward. 34 units were produced under Project 667A Navaga and Project 667AU Nalim...

SSBN K-219 while on combat patrol in the Atlantic, suffered an explosion to a liquid-fuelled SS-N-6 missile in one of its 16 missile tubes. The cause of this explosion was determined to be a leaking missile tube hatch seal, allowing sea water to come into contact with the residue of the missile's propellants, which caused a spontaneous fire resulting in an explosion first of the missile booster, then a subsequent explosion of the warhead detonator charge. In the case of the Yankee-class SSBN, the missiles were located within the pressure hull and the explosion did not cause damage sufficient to immediately sink the ship. It did, however, cause extensive radioactive contamination throughout, requiring the submarine to surface and the evacuation of the crew to the weather deck, and later to a rescue vessel which had responded to the emergency. Subsequently, the K-219 sank into the Hatteras Abyss with the loss of 4 crewmen, and presently rests at a depth of about 18000 feet (5,486.4 m). The Soviet Navy later claimed that the leak was caused by a collision with .

There are indicators suggesting K-129 suffered a similar explosion in 1968, eighteen years earlier. First, the radioactive contamination of the recovered bow section and the six crewmen of K-129 by weapons grade plutonium very strongly indicates the explosion of the warhead detonator charge of one of the missiles, prior to the ship reaching crush depth. The report that the forward section was crushed and that charring in the bow section indicated dieseling

Dieseling

Dieseling or engine run-on is a condition that can occur in spark plug, gasoline powered internal combustion engines, whereby the engine keeps running for a short period after being turned off, due to fuel igniting without a spark....

from an implosion (or alternatively from a fire), would indicate that the explosion occurred while K-129 was submerged and at depth. The report found in Blind Man's Bluff

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage , published in 1998 by Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, and Annette Lawrence Drew, is a non-fiction book about U.S. Navy submarine operations during the Cold War...

that the wreck revealed K-129 with a 10 feet (3 m) hole immediately abaft the conning tower would support the theory of an explosion of one of the three missiles in the sail (possibly missile #3). Since K-129's missiles were housed in the sail, much less structural mass (compared to the Yankee-class) was available to contain such an explosion, and total loss of depth control of the submarine would be instantaneous.

K-129 off-course or out of area

According to Dr. John P. Craven, K-129 crossed the International Date Line

International Date Line

The International Date Line is a generally north-south imaginary line on the surface of the Earth, passing through the middle of the Pacific Ocean, that designates the place where each calendar day begins...

at latitude 40 north

40th parallel north

, which was far south of her expected position:

When K-129 passed longitude 180
180th meridian
The 180th meridian or antimeridian is the meridian which is 180° east or west of the Prime Meridian passing through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. It is common to both east longitude and west longitude. It is used as the basis for the International Date Line because it for the most part passes...

, it should have been farther north, at a latitude of 45 degrees, or more than three hundred miles away. If that was a navigational mistake it would be an error of historic proportions. Thus if the sub were not somewhere in the vicinity of where the Soviets supposed it to be, there would be a high probability, if not a certainty, that the submarine was a rogue, off on its own, in grave disobedience of its orders.

Craven does not explain why he eliminated the possibilities that K-129 was proceeding to a newly assigned and officially approved patrol area, or utilizing a new track to an established patrol area, nor why he concluded that K-129 was acting in an abnormal or criminal manner for a Soviet strategic missile submarine.

Craven also noted, in a strangely worded statement:

While the Russian submarine was presumed to be at sea, an oceanographic ship of the University of Hawaii was conducting research in the oceanic waters off Hawaii's Leeward Islands. The researchers discovered a large slick on the surface of the ocean, collected a sample, and found that it was highly radioactive. They reported this to George Woolard, the director of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysical Research.

Craven does not reconcile a sinking location at 40°N latitude

40th parallel north

with an oil slick hundreds of miles south of that latitude, nor does he reconcile the date/time of the sinking, with date/time of the recovery of radioactive oil by the oceanographic research ship.

Anatoliy Shtyrov (Анатолий Штыров), a former Deputy Chief of the Soviet Pacific Fleet intelligence, states that K-129, whose normal patrol area was off the west coast of the USA, was sent on a unscheduled combat patrol in the eastern Pacific only 1.5 months after returning from its previous patrol. Vladimir Evdasin (Владимир Евдасин), who from June 1960 to March 1961 served aboard K-129, states that K-129 was sent on a secret mission in response to the massive US naval force built-up off the Korean coast after the Pueblo incident

USS Pueblo (AGER-2)

USS Pueblo is an American ELINT and SIGINT Banner-class technical research ship which was boarded and captured by North Korean forces on January 23, 1968, in what is known as the Pueblo incident or alternatively as the Pueblo crisis or the Pueblo affair. Occurring less than a week after President...

. K-129's mission was in support of North Korea, which was an ally of the Soviet Union, and directed against US naval operations, Pacific bases and US maritime support lines to South-east Asia.

Unauthorized missile launch

In 2005 Kenneth Sewell, in his investigative book Red Star Rogue—The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine's Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S., claimed that K-129 ventured much further south, some 300 nautical miles (555.6 km) north west of Oahu on 7 March 1968, positioning to launch one of her three ballistic missiles in a rogue attack on Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor, known to Hawaiians as Puuloa, is a lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet...

. The manner of the launch was purportedly designed to mimic an attack by a Chinese submarine, with the intention of igniting a war between the U.S. and China.

Red Star Rogue posits that the sinking of K-129 was caused by the explosion of one of the ballistic missiles while it was being readied for launch. It goes on to discuss the insertion of a small secret fail safe circuit that would destroy the warhead in the event of an unauthorised launch by a rogue crew member. John Craven's The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea (p. 218) supports a similar conclusion.

Evidence undermining Sewell's false flag operation theory includes CIA's claim that the submarine sank 1560 nautical miles (2,889.1 km) northwest of Hawaii, and the 750 nautical miles (1,389 km) missile range speaks against Hawaii as a viable target for such an attack. The Midway Atoll would have been the only target in range. While China did have at least one Golf-class submarine – built from Soviet plans, the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy

People's Liberation Army Navy

The People's Liberation Army Navy is the naval branch of the People's Liberation Army , the military of the People's Republic of China. Until the early 1990s, the navy performed a subordinate role to the PLA Land Forces. Since then, it has undergone rapid modernisation...

(PLAN) did not successfully develop an SLBM system until the 1970s. Additionally, Sewell provides no evidence of any efforts undertaken by K-129 to mimic any Chinese warship. Sewell's theory points to a conspiracy involving hardcore Communist ideologues highly placed in the Soviet leadership, a group that included KGB

KGB

The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

chief Yuri Andropov

Yuri Andropov

Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...

. This claim is also suspect as it raises the question of why KGB leaders – who have access to nuclear weapons – would need to bypass security safeguards against an unauthorised launch.

In Sewell's next book, All Hands Down, he claimed the Russians falsely believed K-129 was sunk by the U.S. Navy, possibly in a collision with the Swordfish. The book also states that the was lured into a trap and sunk by a Ka-25 helicopter in retaliation for K-129.

Administrative inconsistencies

Russian President Boris Yeltsin posthumously awarded the Order of Valor to 98 sailors who died aboard the K-129. Some have pointed to this level of manning as anomalous, because the normal complement of a diesel-electric Golf-class Russian submarine was about 83. Boosting total submarine complement by almost 20% might tax the logistical capabilities of the submarine (reducing patrol duration), and could potentially hamper the operations of the boat. No explanation for this level of submarine manning has been provided by the Russian Navy.

Much has also been made of the following reported administrative and operational peculiarities preceding K-129's departure:

The official ship's crew manifest was missing from K-129's deployment folder when the ship was declared "missing".
Normal crew rest, refitting and retraining time was violated, and K-129 was required to conduct an unusual sudden deployment after only 8 weeks in port following the completion of her previous combat patrol.
As many as 40% of the crew were new to the ship for this deployment, thus never having had the opportunity to train as a unit.

These crew anomalies, especially the last, may in fact have had an effect on the crew's ability to handle unexpected systems failures and/or mechanical casualties.

Alternative theories on Project Azorian

Red Star Rogue makes the claim that Project Azorian recovered virtually all of K-129 from the ocean floor, and in fact "Despite an elaborate cover-up and the eventual claim the project had been a failure, most of K-129 and the remains of the crew were, in fact, raised from the bottom of the Pacific and brought into the Glomar Explorer".

In August 1993, Ambassador Malcolm Toon

Malcolm Toon

presented to a Russian delegation K-129's ship's bell. According to Red Star Rogue, this bell had been permanently attached to the middle of the conning tower of K-129, thus indicating that in addition to the bow of the submarine, the critical and valuable midsection of the submarine was at least partially recovered by Project Jennifer.

Craven suggests that Project Jennifer's real goal was not the nuclear weapons or the coding systems at all; rather, the project sought to determine exactly what K-129 was doing at 40N/180 "where she did not belong". Such information could be (and supposedly was) utilized within Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger

Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...

's foreign policy of "Deterrence Through Uncertainty", in order to "raise an unanswerable question in Leonid Brezhnev

Leonid Brezhnev

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...

's mind about his command and control of his armed forces".

Mutual agreement – some connection between K-129 and the loss of USS Scorpion

Retired United States Navy

United States Navy

Captain Peter Huchthausen

Peter Huchthausen

Peter A. Huchthausen was a Captain in the United States Navy and the author of several maritime books.-Naval career:The son of the late Chaplain and Mrs. Walther A...

, former naval attaché in Moscow, had a brief conversation in 1987 with Soviet admirals concerning K-129. Huchthausen states that Admiral Peter Navojtsev told him, "Captain, you are very young and inexperienced, but you will learn that there were some matters that both nations have agreed to not discuss, and one of these is the reasons we lost K-129." In 1995, when Huchthausen began work on a book about the Soviet underwater fleet, he interviewed Admiral Victor Dygalo, who stated that the true history of K-129 has not been revealed because of the informal agreement between the two countries' senior naval commands. The purpose of that secrecy, he alleged, is to stop any further research into the losses of and K-129. Huchthausen states that Dygalo told him to "overlook this matter, and hope that the time will come when the truth will be told to the families of the victims."

Gates' visit to Moscow

In October 1992, Robert Gates

Robert Gates

, as the Director of Central Intelligence

Director of Central Intelligence

visited Moscow to meet with President Boris Yeltsin

Boris Yeltsin

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...

of Russia. "As a gesture of intent, a symbol of a new era, I carried with me the Soviet naval flag that had shrouded the coffins of the half dozen Soviet sailors whose remains the Glomar Explorer had recovered when it raised part of a Soviet ballistic missile submarine from deep in the Pacific Ocean in the mid-1970s, I also was taking to Yeltsin a videotape of their burial at sea, complete with prayers for the dead and the Soviet national anthem—a dignified and respectful service even at the height of the Cold War."

Gates’s decision to bring the videotape of the funeral held for the men on the Golf was ultimately motivated by the fact that the United States wanted to inspire Russia to offer up information on missing American service men in Vietnam. Before that, “We had never confirmed anything to the Russians except in various vague senses,” he said in an interview. “Shortly after the USSR collapsed, the Bush administration had told the Russians through an intermediary that we couldn’t tell them any more about what had happened on Golf/Glomar. But then when we started asking the Russians about what had happened to U.S. pilots shot down over Vietnam, and if any U.S. POWs had been transferred to Russia and held there, they came back and said, “What about our guys in the submarine?” At the time, the administration told the Russians only that there were no survivors and that there were only scattered remains.” A subsequent FOIA search to find if any POWs were released as a result of this visit produced only negative results.

“American officers have refuted the Russian charge made early on that American nuclear attack submarine U.S.S. Swordfish was the U.S. submarine involved—a charge based solely on the latter’s reported arrival in the Ship Repair Facility, Yokosuka, Japan, on 17 March 1968, with a badly damaged sail. Retired U.S. Navy Admiral William D. Smith

William D. Smith

William Dee Smith is a retired United States Navy four star admiral who served as United States Military Representative, NATO Military Committee from 1991 to 1993. Smith retired in 1993.-References:...

informed Dygalo by letter following an 31 August 1994, meeting of a Joint U.S./Russia Commission examining questions of Cold War and previous war missing, that the allegation of Swordfish’s involvement was not correct and that Swordfish was nowhere near the Golf on 8 March 1968. The joint commission, headed by General Volkogonov and Ambassador Toon, informed the Russians that no U.S. submarines on 8 March 1968, had been within 300 nautical miles (555.6 km) of the site where the K-129 was found.”

External links

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb305/ Project Azorian: The CIA's Declassified History of the Glomar Explorer, 12 February 2010, Matthew Aid, William Burr, Thomas Blanton
AZORIAN The Raising of the K-129 / 2009 – 2 Part TV Documentary / Michael White Films Vienna

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