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These days, a floating crane called the Chesapeake 1000, nicknamed “Chessy,” has the difficult task of removing the shattered steel from last week’s fatal bridge collapse in Baltimore.
He has taken on many jobs over the decades. But the crane’s most notable operation, until last week, was helping the CIA recover part of a sunken Soviet submarine.
In the early 1970s, the crane barge was called the Sun 800 because of the number of tons it could lift. He helped build a specialized ship that lifted part of the submarine in 1974. Specifically, the crane lifted heavy machinery onto the ship that was vital to the Cold War heist.
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The equipment included a mechanical claw, tons of steel tubing, and a heavy-duty hydraulic system. The Soviet submarine was approximately 3 miles below the surface of the Pacific.
The CIA wrote on its website that the ship “could conduct the entire recovery underwater, out of sight of other ships, planes or spy satellites.” The specialized ship was named Hughes Glomar Explorer, after billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes.
To save time, a Philadelphia-area shipyard built the heavy parts of the ship on land. The floating crane was needed to lift those assembled parts to the new ship.
“The Sun 800 was built specifically to help us build the Hughes Glomar Explorer,” said Gene Schorsch, then head of hull design for Sun Shipbuilding and Drydock Co.
The secret mission was called “Project Azorian”.
The news from 1975 talked about the mission. But Washington didn’t confirm the basic facts until 2010, when the CIA released a partially redacted report that lacked many of the juicy details.
“It is considered one of the most expensive intelligence operations of all time,” said M. Todd Bennett, a history professor at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, who wrote a book about the mission in 2022. ” And not only that, it is without a doubt one of the most inventive or daring intelligence operations in American history.”
The submarine, K-129, was lost northeast of Hawaii in 1968. After the Soviets abandoned their search, the United States found the vessel.
“Finding out is one thing,” Bennett said. “But to have the means to try to come up with a way to recover that piece of hardware is truly extraordinary. It has been compared, and rightly so, to an underwater moon shot.”
The submarine was a potential source of intelligence, from details about Soviet nuclear weapons capabilities to military codes.
By 1970, the CIA had hatched its plan and devised a cover for the ship: a commercial deep-sea mining vessel owned by Hughes.
The agency’s hope was to recover a 132-foot section of the submarine, which weighed 1,750 tons.
“While maintaining its position in the ocean currents, the ship had to lower the (claw) by adding 60-foot sections of supporting steel pipe, one at a time,” the CIA wrote.
Another piece of machinery fitted to the ship was a special platform. It was used to keep the grapple system stable and on target in ocean currents.
“What you want is for the ship to be able to roll or pitch without affecting that pipe,” Schorsch said.
During the mission, the claw took over the submarine section. But about a third of the way along it broke, allowing part of the submarine’s hull to fall off.
Former CIA Director William Colby later wrote that the most valuable aspects of the submarine were lost, Bennett said.
The rescue, however, included the bodies of six Soviet sailors, who were given a formal military burial at sea.
A second mission was planned. But journalists broke the story in 1975, led by Seymour Hersh, then writing for The New York Times, and columnist Jack Anderson.
News reports indicated that some manuals may have been recovered, while some pieces of the hull helped the United States refine its estimates of Soviet naval capabilities, Bennett said.
Anderson’s sources told him that Project Azorian was too expensive and sapped the resources of other intelligence programs, Bennett said.
The submarine was also diesel-powered and was several generations behind nuclear-powered Soviet submarines.
“Anderson’s sources, and Anderson, argued that it was actually a museum piece, a relic,” Bennett said.
The American media was heavily criticized for reporting on the project, which had a “chilling effect” as the media became less willing to reveal intelligence secrets, Bennett said.
The professor said that the mission itself was a partial success.
“Sadly the ship no longer exists; it was scrapped years ago,” Bennett said. “But it was an important piece of hardware. And this was a really important mission in the history of American intelligence, in part because it was one of the first major submarine operations that we were aware of.”
Meanwhile, the crane that helped build the Hughes Glomar Explorer is now often touted as one of the largest of its kind on the East Coast.
Engineering News-Record, a magazine that covers the construction industry, wrote in 2017 that Donjon Marine Co. Inc. purchased the Sun 800 in 1993. The salvage company increased the capacity to 1,000 tons and renamed it Chesapeake 1000 to reflect what that can transport.
Since then, he has helped build bridges and buildings. But few projects have been as urgent as the one in Baltimore. Officials are scrambling to clear shipping channels for one of the busiest ports on the East Coast and to build a new Francis Scott Key Bridge.
“When you get out there and see it up close, you realize how daunting this task is,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said Friday after the Chesapeake 1000 reached the collapsed stretch. “You realize how difficult the work ahead of us is.”
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