Ghosts over the Kremlin and the White House: when will the secret of the Soviet submarine K-129 be revealed?

Gennady Charodeyev

In October 1992, CIA Director Robert Gates paid an unofficial visit to Moscow. He handed over to President Boris Yeltsin a videotape recording the ceremony of reburial of the bodies of six Soviet sailors recovered from the compartments of our submarine K-129, which sank in 1968. The Americans assured Moscow that they managed to lift only the bow of the submarine. The Kremlin believed them then. They really wanted to believe.

Our specialists did not like the film brought by Gates. He seemed to them, to put it mildly, "agitation" - it seems like the Americans did it out of "love for the Russians." For some reason, the creators of the video did not capture the main fragments of the damaged K-129 hull, not to mention the remains of the dead Soviet sailors - they were buried in closed coffins covered with St. Andrew's flags.

So, what did the Americans actually lift from a depth of more than 5600 meters in the Pacific Ocean without Moscow's permission?

How the K-129 sank

On February 24, 1968, a Soviet submarine left its base in Kamchatka for combat patrols, carrying high-yield nuclear ballistic missiles and two nuclear torpedoes on board. In the submerged position, the K-129 moved at a speed of 12 knots, if necessary, it could dive to the maximum depth of 300 meters.

On March 8, the submarine did not get in touch. The main command of the Navy and the command of the Pacific Fleet began a secret search and rescue operation for the K-129 crew, which took place for two months at a distance of over 1000 miles from Kamchatka, at depths of 5000-6000 meters. The Soviet fleet began an active search for the disappeared submarine only two weeks later, but all the efforts of a huge squadron of ships did not lead to success. The probable area of the disaster was too large, the depths were too great, and the USSR did not have any special means of tracking the submarine cruiser that could shed additional light on its fate. 98 of our sailors did not return home ...

In Moscow, it was decided that the boat was lost, and the incident was classified.

In the 1950s, the United States began extensive work to deploy the SOSUS sonar system. In different parts of the oceans, on the proposed patrol routes of Soviet missile submarines, numerous bottom microphone arrays were installed, the main task of which was to "listen" to the sea in an attempt to detect the noise of submarines (engines, auxiliary mechanisms, propellers, etc.). Paying attention to the unusual bustle of more than thirty Soviet ships in the North Pacific Ocean, the Americans suggested that such activity could be associated with the loss of one of the submarines, and then turned to the SOSUS data.

The acoustic stations of the system, of course, were also in the region of the disappearance of the K-129. After analyzing the accumulated data, American specialists, according to them, recorded a certain "sound of a single explosion" in a conditional spot with an area of 30 square miles very close to the 180th meridian, 1230 kilometers from Kamchatka and 1100 kilometers north of Midway Atoll. While Soviet ships were unsuccessfully looking for a needle in a haystack, the United States obtained information about a specific area where the K-129 tragedy could have occurred.

The Americans were eager to take possession of the military secrets of the USSR, to get their hands on a cipher machine and, of course, nuclear warheads that lay on the ocean floor. From the famous Hawaiian base Pearl Harbor, a unique submarine USS Halibut ("Halibut"), designed for special operations, departed to the area determined by SOSUS. It was literally packed with the most modern oceanographic equipment at that time, including sonar and an underwater vehicle with video and cameras. Several weeks of thorough underwater exploration have borne fruit. In August 1968, the remains of K-129 were discovered.

Collision or explosion?

What happened to the K-129 was never fully established. Many experts of the USSR Navy are still convinced that the tragedy was caused by the collision of the K-129 with the American submarine pursuing it. The version is unlikely, because in this case, the Americans would have known the place of the K-129 death from the very beginning.

According to the American side, it was visually established that a large vertical crack was observed in the aft area of the cabin, and the missile silos were also severely damaged.

During the Azorian operation, the secrecy label was the highest: the shipbuilders did not even know the purpose of the ships under construction. The displacement of one of them, the Hughes Glomar Explorer, is 36 thousand tons, the cost is $ 350 million. It looked more like an alien mechanism from a science fiction movie than any ship. The official cover legend was the version of the construction of a vessel for deep-sea drilling.

The project employed 4,000 people, and funding at the request of the CIA leadership was partially taken over by billionaire Howard Hughes, who was considered a genius inventor and a great lover of various adventures. The project was personally supervised by US President Richard Nixon.

Hughes' team designed and built a special ship-lifting complex in record time.

The very idea of lifting a submarine with a displacement of about 3000 tons from a depth of three nautical miles in those years was so absurd that the leaders of the Soviet Navy could not even think of the true goals of building a giant ship and a special barge. Therefore, when intelligence reported on the impending attempt to lift the K-129 by the Americans, the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy dismissed such a possibility in principle. When all the preparations were completed, the Americans began to carry out the planned operation.

In early June 1974, the Hughes Glomar Explorer took its place above the K-129. The string of drill pipes, at the end of which there was a platform with huge hydraulic grips, thrusters, lighting equipment and television cameras, slowly crawled down ....

In February 1975, the American press announced an attempt to lift the sunken Soviet submarine K-129, which allegedly ended in partial success: during the rise, it broke, most of it again plunged into the abyss. It was possible to extract only the nasal end with the bodies of six crew members. Since the Soviet authorities did not even recognize the very fact of the death of the K-129, the Americans independently buried the remains of our submariners with all appropriate military honors.

A funeral ceremony for the dead sailors was performed, for which a Russian priest from the New York Orthodox Church was invited.

Deadlock situation

Officially not recognizing the death of the submarine, the Soviet command issued an order to patrol the site of its discovery with the authority to open hostilities in order to prevent the rise of the rest of its parts. The patrol lasted six months. Diplomats started working. But the Americans easily parried the Soviet arguments: there was no official statement about the death of the submarine, which means that the property at the bottom does not belong to anyone, and anyone can pick it up.

The situation reached an impasse, and both sides pretended that nothing was happening. Nevertheless, Washington decided to curtail the work. As a matter of fact, they have already completed their task, so they could well play along with us, but more on that below.

The cause of the tragedy remained unknown. The most common version is the unintentional ramming of the K-129 by the American submarine Swordfish following it. The version is heated by data that one of the submarines of this class from the water area where the K-129 was located, came to the base with damage and got up for repairs. This version is far-fetched.

Some experts believe that when charging the batteries while the submarine was on the surface, a hydrogen-air mixture exploded in the battery compartments due to a violation of safety rules. Similarly, around 40 diesel submarines died around the world, and these are only officially confirmed cases. As for the reasons for the death of the K-129, we will most likely never know for sure.

Almost according to Stanislavsky

Many shipbuilders, a specialist in underwater technical work, repeat the words of the great Stanislavsky: we don't believe in the Americans! More precisely, they believe that the operation to lift the K-129 was carried out, they believe that the remains of six Soviet submariners are buried in a foreign military cemetery overseas. The question is different: was the events so unfortunate for the Americans as a result of the Azorian operation in those distant years for us now?

Especially for Novye Izvestia the situation is commented on by Tengiz Borisov, Vice Admiral of the Reserve, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, Chairman of the Committee for Special Purpose Underwater Operations under the Government of the Russian Federation (1992 - 1994):

- Suppose one of the paws of Hughes' ship lifting platform was really damaged during the capture of the submarine, and the latter broke at a depth of about 3000 meters, as the filmmakers of the aforementioned film showed. The fault line, according to their scheme, passed along the border of the first and second compartments of K-129. Thus, approximately 3/4 or 4/5 of the sub's mass unexpectedly broke away from the ship lifting platform block. A dynamic blow would have to destroy the pipe string, and break the cables on which the block was pulled up to the Hughes Glomar Explore. Let us even assume that the pipes and cables withstood this blow, the block, having made several oscillatory movements, calmed down, and the rise of the bow end successfully continued. If we assume that the K-129 at the beginning of the ascent should have been hung exactly at "zero", without roll and trim (or with their insignificant values), which in itself is obvious, then after tearing off most of the boat's hull, the system should have skew. The angle of inclination of the ship lifting platform block - the bow end of the K-129 should have reached at least 35-45 degrees (most likely it would have been much larger - about 60 degrees), which would hardly have allowed it to be pulled close enough to the bottom of the Hughes Glomar Explore, to lay it on a barge submerged on pontoons, and retrieve to the surface. I'm not even talking about the integrity of the pipe column fastener to the block, ”suggested Vice Admiral Borisov.

According to him, there is every reason to believe that the project to lift the K-129, developed and carried out by Howard Hughes and his team, was not partially implemented, but fully.

They were tens of years ahead of their time, and we must pay tribute to their brilliant scientific and engineering foresight, the expert believes. The Americans, most likely, got everything, for the sake of which they started such an adventurous operation. The official version of the death of the K-129 is just a beautiful cover legend. The leadership of the Navy, the Ministry of Defense and the USSR swallowed it without chewing: everyone too wanted it to be so. Otherwise, it was necessary to report “upstairs” that the top-secret encryption machine and no less secret nuclear weapons were in the hands of a potential adversary. How many heads would roll off the military Olympus at the same time, it is even difficult to imagine. And so it broke during the ascent - and ends in the water. Everyone is happy...

"To be honest, I personally believe that in the foreseeable future the secrecy label from the K-129 materials will not be removed either on the other or on this side of the Pacific Ocean, for obvious reasons", - Tengiz Borisov is sure.

The K-129 crew died over 50 years ago. Six people found eternal peace on American soil. But where are the remains of the rest of the officers and sailors of the unfortunate submarine? More precisely, what is left of them? In a crumpled steel coffin at a depth of more than 5 km? Or are they secretly buried in an unmarked mass grave on the other side of the ocean? Cremated and their ashes scattered over the sea?

There are still people alive who are able to shed light on these issues, but they, obeying the oath, remain silent. It's time to let them talk. This must be done at least for the sake of the memory of the victims of the Cold War, for the sake of their relatives, for the sake of those who now continue to carry out military service on earth, in heaven and at sea. Just in the name of the triumph of humanism, otherwise the descendants will not understand us.

- If I believed in ghosts, I would turn to psychics with a request to convince the restless souls of submariners until then to appear at night to those on whom the disclosure of the archives of the special services depends, until they deign to do so. But I do not believe in ghosts, so I appeal to caring people both on our soil and on American soil: help restore the truth. Let it emerge in the literal and figurative sense of the word, ”Vice Admiral Tengiz Borisov told Novye Izvestia.