Download or read book Project Azorian written by Norman C Polmar and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2012-09-15 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early August 1974, despite incredible risks and after six years of secret preparations, the CIA attempted to salvage the sunken Soviet ballistic missile submarine K-129 from the depths of the North Pacific Ocean. The audacious effort was undertaken with the cover of an undersea mining operation sponsored by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. “Azorian”—incorrectly identified as Project Jennifer by the press—was the most ambitious ocean engineering endeavor attempted by man. Following the accidental sinking of a Soviet missile submarine in March 1968, U.S. intelligence agencies were able to determine the precise location and to develop a means of raising the submarine from a depth of 16,400 feet. The remarkable salvage effort of the K-129, which contained nuclear-armed torpedoes and one nuclear tipped missile as well as crypto equipment, was conducted with Soviet naval ships a few hundred yards from the lift ship, the Hughes Glomar Explorer. The book is based, in part, on the research for Michael White’ documentary film Azorian: The Raising of the K-129, released in late 2009. The research for the book and the documentary forced the CIA to issue a brief report on Project Azorian in early 2010, with one-third of the document redacted.

Download or read book The Taking of K 129 written by Josh Dean and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incredible true tale of espionage and engineering set at the height of the Cold War--a mix between The Hunt for Red October and Argo--about how the CIA, the U.S. Navy, and America's most eccentric mogul spent six years and nearly a billion dollars to steal the nuclear-armed Soviet submarine K-129 after it had sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean; all while the Russians were watching. In the early hours of February 25, 1968, a Russian submarine armed with three nuclear ballistic missiles set sail from its base in Siberia on a routine combat patrol to Hawaii. Then it vanished. As the Soviet Navy searched in vain for the lost vessel, a small, highly classified American operation using sophisticated deep-sea spy equipment found it--wrecked on the sea floor at a depth of 16,800 feet, far beyond the capabilities of any salvage that existed. But the potential intelligence assets onboard the ship--the nuclear warheads, battle orders, and cryptological machines--justified going to extreme lengths to find a way to raise the submarine. So began Project Azorian, a top secret mission that took six years, cost an estimated $800 million, and would become the largest and most daring covert operation in CIA history. After the U.S. Navy declared retrieving the sub "impossible," the mission fell to the CIA's burgeoning Directorate of Science and Technology, the little-known division responsible for the legendary U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird spy planes. Working with Global Marine Systems, the country's foremost maker of exotic, deep-sea drilling vessels, the CIA commissioned the most expensive ship ever built and told the world that it belonged to the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, who would use the mammoth ship to mine rare minerals from the ocean floor. In reality, a complex network of spies, scientists, and politicians attempted a project even crazier than Hughes's reputation: raising the sub directly under the watchful eyes of the Russians.

Download or read book The CIA s Greatest Covert Operation written by David H. Sharp and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2012-04-04 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: March 1968: three miles below the stormy surface of the North Pacific, a Soviet submarine lay silent as a tomb-its crew dead, its payload of nuclear missiles, once directed toward strategic targets in Hawaii, inoperable. No longer a real threat, the sub still presented an alluring target and it was not long before the CIA answered its siren call—even at the risk of igniting World War III. Project AZORIAN—the monumentally audacious six-year mission to recover the sub and learn its secrets—has been celebrated within the CIA as its greatest covert operation and hailed by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers as the twentieth century's greatest marine engineering feat. While previous accounts have offered beguiling glimpses, none have had significant access to CIA personnel or documents. Now David Sharp, the mission's Director of Recovery Systems, draws upon his own recollections and personal records, ship's logs, declassified documents, and conversations with team members to shine a bright light on this remarkable but still little understood enterprise. Sharp reveals how the CIA conceived, organized, and conducted AZORIAN, including recruiting the legendary Howard Hughes to provide the "ocean mining" cover story. He takes readers onto and beneath the high seas to show the problems faced by the crew during the operation, including potential Soviet intervention and tense moments when the recovery ship itself was in danger of breaking up. He also puts a human face on key players like Carl Duckett, the head of the CIA's Science and Technology Directorate; John Parangosky, AZORIAN's program manager; John Graham, designer of the Hughes Glomar Explorer; Curtis Crooke of Global Marine Development, co-creator of the "grunt lift" recovery concept; and Oscar "Ott" Schick, manager of the Lockheed-built capture vehicle and submersible barge. A mammoth undertaking worthy of the most dramatic and spell-binding espionage fiction, Project AZORIAN harnessed American imagination and ingenuity at their highest levels. Featuring dozens of previously classified photos, Sharp's chronicle of that amazing operation plunges readers deep into the darkest shadows of the Cold War to produce the definitive account of an amazing mission.

Download or read book A Matter of Risk written by Roy Varner and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 1978 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Red Star Rogue written by Kenneth Sewell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-09-26 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Hunt for Red October" meets "Blind Man's Bluff" in this chilling, true story of a rogue Soviet submarine that sank while trying to provoke a war between the U.S. and China.

Download or read book The Admirals Advantage written by Christopher Ford and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Operational intelligence, knowledge of the enemy’s location and actions, is crucial to effective military operations. The Admirals’ Advantage offers a revealing look at naval operational intelligence based on the findings of a classified Operational Intelligence (OPINTEL) Lessons-Learned Project and a 1998 Symposium at the Navy and Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center. Participants included senior intelligence and operational leaders who explored the evolution and significance of OPINTEL since World War II. Past and current practices were examined with inputs from fleet and shore commands and insights from interviews and correspondence with senior flag officers and intelligence professionals.

Download or read book Opening the Great Depths written by Norman C Polmar and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2021-05-15 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Developed by French physicist Auguste Piccard and his son Jacques, the bathyscaph Trieste was a scientific marvel that allowed unprecedented scientific, technical, and military feats in the ocean depths. France and the United States both acquired and subsequently developed variants of the original bathyscaph. While both France and the United States employed the bathyscaph as a tool for scientific investigation of the deepest ocean depths, the U.S. Navy developed and employed the Trieste for military missions as well. From its earliest years, participants in the Trieste program realized that they were making history, blazing a trail into previously unexplored and unexploited depths, developing new capabilities and opening a new frontier. Comparisons with developments in space and the space-race between the United States and the Soviet Union often were made concerning the Trieste program and contemporary developments in undersea technologies and capabilities. The Trieste opened the entire oceans to exploration, exploitation, and operations. The bathyscaph was a first-generation system, a "Model-T" that spawned an entirely new industry and encouraged new concepts for deep-ocean naval operations. Advances in deep-sea technologies lacked the "gee-whiz" factor of the concurrent space race, but were highly significant in the development of new technology, new knowledge, and new military capabilities. Opening the Great Depths is the story of the three Trieste deep-ocean vehicles, their officers and enlisted men, and the civilians, often told in their own words, documenting for the first time the earliest years of humanity's probing into Earth's final frontier.

Download or read book MV Hughes Glomar Explorer written by Mark H. Glissmeyer and published by . This book was released on 2020-03-20 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In March of 1968 a Soviet submarine was lost with all hands 16,500 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. In 1974 portions of the submarine were brought to the surface using a covert recovery system designed specifically for the mission. The story of the more than six years intervening is the story of Project AZORIAN, that is, the story of the MV Hughes Glomar Explorer. This endeavor ranks at the forefront of imaginative and bold operations. It combines immense size and scope, advancements with technology, complex engineering and testing, and a demanding mission scenario in an unforgiving marine environment. While some aspects of the CIA mission remain Top Secret, recently declassified documents allow this story to be told from its early beginnings with the loss of the submarine, until the final days when the recovery ship sailed on her last voyage. This hardcover version includes 36 figures and charts showing the details of the project including construction, maps, recovery vehicle, submersible, and target location.

Download or read book Project Azorian written by The Central Intelligence Agency and published by . This book was released on 2017-02-03 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ""Azorian,"" the code name for a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) project to recover the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 from the Pacific Ocean floor in 1974, using the purpose-built ship Hughes Glomar Explorer.. The 1968 sinking of K-129 occurred approximately 1,560 nautical miles (2,890 km) northwest of Hawaii. Project Azorian was one of the most complex, expensive, and secretive intelligence operations of the Cold War at a cost of about $800 million ($3.9 billion in 2017 dollars). Now, for the first time in print, is the official CIA history of the event. This document, secured by FOIA and heavily redacted but provides a detailed history from the CIA, of Howard Hughes daring plan to recover the sunken K-129.

Download or read book Islands of Destiny written by John Prados and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Battle of Midway is traditionally held as the point when Allied forces gained advantage over the Japanese. In Islands of Destiny, acclaimed historian and military intelligence expert John Prados points out that the Japanese forces quickly regained strength after Midway and continued their assault undaunted. Taking this surprising fact as the start of his inquiry, he began to investigate how and when the Pacific tide turned in the Allies’ favor. Using archives of WWII intelligence reports from both sides, Prados offers up a compelling reassessment of the true turning in the Pacific: not Midway, but the fight for the Solomon Islands. Combat in the Solomons saw a series of surface naval battles, including one of the key battleship-versus-battleship actions of the war; two major carrier actions; daily air duels, including the aerial ambush in which perished the famous Japanese naval commander Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku; and many other hair-raising exploits. Commencing with the Allied invasion of Guadalcanal, Prados shows how and why the Allies beat Japan on the sea, in the air, and in the jungles.

Download or read book Intel Wars written by Matthew M. Aid and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-01-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the monumental growth of the American intelligence community after the September 11 attacks, citing the billions that have been spent on intelligence efforts while explaining why its sophisticated systems are still being eluded by ragtag enemies. By the author of The Secret Sentry.

Download or read book Domp written by R. John Rutten MD and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2012-07 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In March of 1972, Dr. R. John Rutten was practicing family medicine in Santa Barbara, California, when he was contacted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Before taking up a public sector career, Dr. Rutten had obtained specialized training and experience in diving medicine while operating decompression chambers for the US Navy. It was that expertise that won him the attention of the CIA. The plan was to secretly raise the Soviet K-129 nuclear-armed submarine that had sunk in 1968. The Hughes Glomar Explorer, the tremendous deep-sea drilling platform that would carry the crew on their journey, was still under construction at the time. Two years after being recruited, in August of 1974, Dr. Rutten and forty-five companions flew a private charter to Hawaii where they boarded the completed Explorer. He was assigned to B-Crew, charged with exploring and recovering the submarine after its miraculous discovery at a depth of 17,000 feet two months earlier. In this firsthand, historical account, Dr. Rutten recounts his seven weeks with the B-Crew aboard the Hughes Glomar Explorer as they attempt to elude the ever-watchful Soviet trawlers to exhume a priceless relic of Soviet engineering.

Download or read book Blind Man s Bluff written by Sherry Sontag and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2008-03-04 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the secret history of America's submarine warfare in this fast-paced and deeply researched chronicle of adventure and intrigue during the Cold War that reads like a spy thriller. Blind Man's Bluff is an exciting, epic story of adventure, ingenuity, courage, and disaster beneath the sea. This New York Times bestseller reveals previously unknown dramas, such as: The mission to send submarines wired with self-destruct charges into the heart of Soviet seas to tap crucial underwater telephone cables. How the Navy's own negligence may have been responsible for the loss of the USS Scorpion, a submarine that disappeared, all hands lost, in 1968. The bitter war between the CIA and the Navy and how it threatened to sabotage one of America's most important undersea missions. The audacious attempt to steal a Soviet submarine with the help of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, and how it was doomed from the start. A magnificent achievement in investigative reporting, Blind Man's Bluff reads like a spy thriller, but with one important difference -- everything in it is true.

Download or read book Why the Uss Scorpion Ssn 589 Was Lost written by Bruce Rule and published by . This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In their official report of 29 January 1970, the SCORPION Structural Analysis Group (SAG), which included the Navy's leading experts in submarine design, submarine structures, and the effect of underwater explosions, advised the Navy Court of Inquiry (COI) that the US nuclear submarine SCORPION was lost on 22 May 1968 becase of the violent explosion of the main storage battery. The COI disregarded that assessment and concluded SCORPION was lost because of the "explosion of (a) large charge weight externalto the submarine's pressure hull." That erroneous conclusion which, by default, has become the Navy's explanation for the tragedy, contributed to the conspiracy theory that SCORPION was sunk by a Soviet torpedo. This book includes six letters sent to the Navy from 2009 to 2011. These letters provide the results of the first reanalysis in 40 yeears of acoustic detections of the loss of SCORPION. This reanalysis confirms the 1970 SAG battery-explosion assessment and provides important new information on the loss of SCORPION. The author was the lead acoustic analyst at the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) for 42 years, ending in 2007. ONI did not receive any SCORPION acoustic data until the author provided it in October 2009. The book includes a prologue signed by 96 members of the Scorpion families asking the Navy to bring forth further information on the causes of the tragedy.

Download or read book Three Miles Down written by Harry Turtledove and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2022-07-26 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling author Harry Turtledove, the modern master of alternate history, a novel of alien contact set in the tumultuous year of the Watergate scandal. It's 1974, and Jerry Stieglitz is a grad student in marine biology at UCLA with a side gig selling short stories to science fiction magazines, just weeks away from marrying his longtime fiancée. Then his life is upended by grim-faced men from three-letter agencies who want him to join a top-secret "Project Azorian" in the middle of the north Pacific Ocean—and they really don't take "no" for an answer. Further, they're offering enough money to solve all of his immediate problems. Joining up and swearing to secrecy, what he first learns is that Project Azorian is secretly trying to raise a sunken Russian submarine, while pretending to be harvesting undersea manganese nodules. But the dead Russian sub, while real, turns out to be a cover story as well. What's down on the ocean floor next to it is the thing that killed the sub: an alien spacecraft. Jerry's a scientist, a longhair, a storyteller, a dreamer. He stands out like a sore thumb on the Glomar Explorer, a ship full of CIA operatives, RAND Corporation eggheads, and roustabout divers. But it turns out that he's the one person in the North Pacific who's truly thought out all the ways that human-alien first contact might go. And meanwhile, it's still 1974 back on the mainland. Richard Nixon is drinking heavily and talking to the paintings on the White House walls. The USA is changing fast—and who knows what will happen when this story gets out? Three Miles Down is both a fresh and original take on First Contact, and a hugely enjoyable romp through the pop culture, political tumult, and conspiracies-within-conspiracies atmosphere that was 1974. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book The Atrocity Archives written by Charles Stross and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-01-03 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first novel in Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross's witty Laundry Files series. Bob Howard is a low-level techie working for a super-secret government agency. While his colleagues are out saving the world, Bob's under a desk restoring lost data. His world was dull and safe - but then he went and got Noticed. Now, Bob is up to his neck in spycraft, parallel universes, dimension-hopping terrorists, monstrous elder gods and the end of the world. Only one thing is certain: it will take more than a full system reboot to sort this mess out . . .

Download or read book My Family Table written by John Besh and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2012: USA Winner, Best Easy Recipes Book 2012 IACP Award Winner in the Children, Youth and Family category 2012 James Beard Award Nominee "Of the recently published books by gourmet chefs on home cooking (e.g., Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Home Cooking with Jean-Georges and Rick Tramonto's Steak with Friends), James Beard Award-winning Louisiana chef John Besh's latest is easily the most beautiful. This stunning volume is filled with intimate photographs of the Besh family in the kitchen, at the table, and outdoors with friends. Recipes like Risotto of Almost Anything and Whole Roasted Sole with Brown Butter reinforce Besh's Jamie Oliver-like argument that practical home cooking does not require reliance on processed products. Includes some excellent holiday recipes. Highly recommended." --Library Journal Renowned chef and James Beard award-winner John Besh invites us into his home and shows us how we can put good, fresh, healthy food on the table for our families every day. In My Family Table, the Iron Chef champion makes a case for the importance of home-cooked meals. "If I can help make a difference by cooking simply and sharing what I love to cook, I can possibly help us all use our passions and skills to make our lives better at almost every meal." From organizing your kitchen and stocking your pantry to demystifying fish cookery, John Besh shares his favorite recipes he cooks with his family every day. Master recipes Risotto of Almost Anything and Creamy Any Vegetable Soup show you how to make the food without worrying about having the right ingredients or mastering complicated techniques. Filled with mouthwatering photographs of each recipe as well as showing John in his kitchen with his wife and four sons, My Family Table captures the spontaneity, intimacy, and fun of home-cooking and will inspire the nation back to the family table.