STOP: The $400 Billion Heist That Blinded the USSR Discover the secret history of Task Azorian, the CIA's high-stakes mission to recuperate the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 utilizing the Hughes Glomar Explorer. This military history documentary reveals how the U.S. utilized a phony deep-sea mining market to steal Soviet nuclear tricks and cryptographic metadata from 16,500 feet down.
TL; DR: In 1974, the CIA and billionaire Howard Hughes launched a $800 million "mining" objective to raise a lost Soviet Golf II-class sub. While the sub fractured throughout the lift, the intelligence haul-- consisting of nuclear torpedoes and style plans-- forced the USSR into a defensive panic that improved Cold War naval teaching permanently.
In this deep dive into Project Azorian, we discover the concealed facts behind: ✅ The SOSUS acoustic triangulation that fixed the K-129 grave. ✅ How the "Glomar Answer" (Neither Confirm Nor Deny) was born. ✅ The engineering of Clementine, the 3-mile-long mechanical claw. ✅ The mental war of doubt that blinded the Soviet Pacific Fleet.
TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 - The Plot Twist: A Mining Ship That Wasn't. 02:30 - Pillar 1: How K-129 Vanished in 1968. 07:15 - Pillar 2: SOSUS The Metadata War. 12:45 - Pillar 3: The Howard Hughes Cover Story. 18:20 - Pillar 4: Clementine - The Difficult Claw. 24:10 - Pillar 5: The Voyage Soviet Surveillance. 30:05 - Pillar 6: First Descent - Touching the Dead. 36:50 - Pillar 7: The 16,500-Foot Lift. 42:15 - Pillar 8: The Fracture - A Sub Breaks in the Sky. 48:30 - Pillar 9: The Glomar Doctrine - Silence as Policy. 54:10 - Pillar 10: The Haul - Nuclear Torpedoes Codes. 61:25 - Pillar 11: Soviet Shock Adaptation. 68:40 - Pillar 12: Fallout - Deep-Sea Mining Ploy. 75:15 - Pillar 13: Legacy - The Break-in That Rewired Secrecy. 82:00 - Conclusion: Unpredictability as a Weapon.
ABOUT THIS VIDEO:. Task Azorian remains the most pricey and adventurous covert operation in CIA history. By developing a believable market to conceal a single objective, Washington showed that legitimacy is a weapon. We analyze the technical metadata-- from the HMB-1 submersible barge to the riser pipe string-- that made this "break-in" possible. If you can force your enemy to doubt their own security, you've already won. This is the story of how a phony mining ship practically began World War III and how the "Glomar Answer" ended up being the ultimate guard for federal government tricks.
SIGN UP WITH THE DISCUSSION:. Do you think the $800 million cost was worth a partial healing? Or was the mental damage to the USSR the genuine reward? Let us know in the remarks below!
