DEEP-SEA SALVAGE: DID CIA USE MOHOLE TECHNIQUES TO RAISE SUB?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP02-06341R000302420009-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 3, 2011
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: May 16, 1975
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

16 MAY 1975
Deep-Sea-.Salvage': Did. CIA Use
Mohole Techniques to Raise Sub?
The CIA's recent attempt to salvage a
sunken Russian submarine has opened. up
a new technological arena. for strategic
skirmishing between the great powers. If
parts of a submarine can be recovered
from the deep-sea bed, so too can .smaller
objects, such as hydrophones and the reen-'
try vehicles from ICBM tests. But the tech-
nology may not be as new or unprecedent-
ed as it was made to appear in the first en-
thusiastic accounts of the Glomar Ex-
plorer's` deep-sea escapade. One of the
pioneers of deep-sea recovery suggested to
the CIA 12 years ago a mission so similar
to the Glomar Explorer's that he is now
reviewing his patent rights. There is also
some reason to doubt that the Glomar Ex-
plorer's task. was quite as large as has been
portrayed.
A proposal to retrieve missile nose
cones, and maybe submarines ' also, was
presented to the CIA.in the-early 1960's by
Ocean Science' and Engineering. Inc., a
small. but adventurous company whose.
,members_ designed the basic systems for
Project Mohole, the plan to drill a hole
through the sea bed to the Mohorovicic
discontinuity. According to a former OSE
employee, the proposal was stimulated by
the. sinking of the American nuclear-pow
ered submarine Thresher in 1963. ' The
employee told Science that the proposal
,envisaged deployment of a. drill pipe with
a terminal claw from a dynamically. posi-
tioned surface ship. Both the technique and
purpose. of the OSE proposal, which.the
CIA turned down,.were the same as that
of the Glomar Explorer, he says. The presi-
dent of OSE, Ed Lawlor, confirmed the
account but said that the proposal was
"too sensitive" to discuss further over the.
telephone. Another former OSE employee
1. Glamor Explorer stations
itself over submarine.
3. TV-guided
giant grapnels
are lowered
and grasp
submarine.
Part of sub is
liftrd to barge.
Ballast
tonics
Artist's conception (left), drawn in /969. of a search and recovery operation hr the Alcoa Seaprohe.
a vessel using the dynamic positioning and drill pipe recovery technique. devised by Willard llascom.
The vessel was completed in 1971. (Picture credit: Alcoa) Diagram front Time ,Magazine (right).
showing Glomar Explorer's mode of recovery. [Reprinted by permission from Time, the weekly
magazine; copyright Time Inc.I
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say oe proposal as initiated before the
sinking Of the Threvher? the original pur-,
pose being to recover missile nose cones;:;
from off Palms ra, one of the Line Islands?
in the Pacific:
Willard N. Ba com,'an engineer with
genius but no decree. founded OSE when
he resigned from Prefect Mohole. Though
the projeci. ent on to political disaster, the
techniques evolved by Bascom and his
team later, became the basis of the highly
successful deep-sea drilling- program car--
ried out by the oceanographic research:
ship Glomar Challenger. Were Bascom's1;
ideas also the ,basis: of the. Glomar Ex- i
plorer, the CIA ship operated. by Howard
:Hughes' Summa Corporation under their
guise of mining for deep-sea nodules until.p
its cover was blown 2 months ago? .I
The two ships bear the name Glomar be
cause both were designed. by the Global
Marine Corporation of Los Angeles. Glo-
bal Marine officials decline to discuss the Glomar-Explorer, but the accounts that.
appeared during March- -and. Apri l. purport,
to describe the principal operating features t.
of: the. ship'. To the extent that these ac-
counts' .can .be relied on, the ship would
appear to incorporate the main techniques y,
'described by Bascom over the last 10 years.
such as dynamic positioning to. keep the,.
ship in one spot, use . of a tapered drill.
pipe to recover the object, and deployment
.of powered tongs to grapple it.. 'I
Bascom. now .director of the Southern
California Coastal . Water Research
Project, declines to comment on.OSE's'
proposal to the CIA. or its similarity to the
-techniques used by the Glomar.Explorer.
His attorney. George Wise of Long Beach.
California, says only that "a review of his
rights is being undertaken." According to
Global Marine's secretary and treasurer,
Taylor Hancock.. the G.lomar- Explorer's
technology is "vastly different-from Bas-
com's conceptions. but -neither. he nor ,.,.
Curtis Crooke, head of the company's j,.
Glomar Explorer program, is willing to
describe what the differences may be.
The Glorrtar Explorer, Time magazine p,
announced last March. "pushed the limits
of engineering and technology almost. as
far as Project Apollo." The Los Angeles
Times praised the ship as a "revolution-
ary" craft. designed to reach to "unheard
.of ocean depths'.', (the 'Russian submarine
reportedly lay in 16,500 feet of water).
Such publicity may have been a welcome
change for the CIA. which. engendered it.
But. remarkable as the Glomar Explore) s
achievement -whatever it was--may have
been, its operating depth was not precisely
"unheard of." A patent tiled by Bascom in
1962 and -ranted in 1965 (U.S. Patent No.
3,215,976) describes a method for search-
ing and recovering objects with drill pipe
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and pick-up. tongs "at depths of the ordc
of 20,000 feet."
Bascom's patent is no mere pipe dream.
A ship has been built according to its speci-
fications by the Alcoa Marine Corpo-
ration. Called the Alcoa Seaprobe. it. was
built in 1971 and is designed to lift weights
of 200.tons from 6000 feet and -50 tons (us-
ing.high -strength dill pipe) from 18.000
feet. Glomar Explorer, according to Time.
used bottom placed instruments to main-
tain "an almost impossible stationary posi-
tion, straying no more than 50 feet in any
direction." The Alcoa Seaprobe, according
to her former chief engineer, can hover
with an accuracy of,about 20 feet. George
G. Scholley; president of the Alcoa Marine
Corporation, says he has "the utmost re-
spect" for the Glamor Explorer's achieve=ment but notes that it would seem to be
" justan upscaling from what we are doing
-the technology is basically the same, the
basic concept is the same."
The deep-sea search and recovery capa-
bility of the Glomar Explorer and Alcoa
Seaprobe in effect make it technically
feasible.to retrieve a large variety of ob-
jects. provided that the cost is'worthwhile.
Four classes of objects with-strategic im-
plications are submarines, missiles. satel-
lites, and hydrophones.
? Submarines. Two American nuclear
submarines are known to have sunk in the
Atlantic. the Thresher in 1963 and the
Scorpion in 1968. Both were nuclear-
pow-ered attack submarines and carried no.
missiles. The Thresher lies in 8.000 feet of
water, the Scorpion in about 12.000 to
14.000 feet. The two submarines are in
pieces, but there is no detectable leakage.
from their nuclear power plants. A few
small objects have been recovered with a
magnetic trawl towed from the Mizar, a
Navy-deep-sea reconnaissance ship which
is said to have made the initial survey of
the Russian submarine site in the Pacific.
Besides the Thresher and the Scorpion,
two Russian submarines are reported to
have sunk in the Atlantic. A November.
class nuclear-powered attack submarine,
sank off Portugal in April 1970, and anoth-.
Cr nuclear submarine, equipped to carry
three nuclear missiles, foundered 900 miles
northeast of Newfoundland in March
1972, and may have been lost. The Los An-
geles Times, in its initial story on the Glo-
mar Explorer, reported that the Atlantic
Ocean was the site of the ship's operation.
The Glomar Explorer is known at least to
have conducted tests in the Atlantic after
being completed in 1973 at a Pennsylvania
shipyard.
? Missiles. The Soviet Union has to test
its longest range ,ICBM's over water be-
cause its overland range is slightly too
short for their full flight path. The initial
propulsion stages of such a missile would
fall back in the. general vicinity of the
launch point and the final stage of the or-
der of 100 miles further on. The reentry ve
hicle, however, would be designed to sur-
vive the flight down to the intended ex-
plosion point and maybe to sea level.
Most reentry vehicles used on Soviet
ICBM tests over the Pacific would not
contain real warheads, or amthing resem-
bling them. But, according to an expert
who declines to be identified. "if you think
about how engineers go about convincing
themselves their designs will work, you
would expect that at some time in a flight
test program a reasonable facsimile of an
actual bomb would be flown.The same
source adds that the Russians "have taken
a more empirical approach to these things
than we have-they want to see things ac-
tually done in a test rather than rely on cal-
culations and extrapolations."
A reentry vehicle containing a "reason-
able facsimile of a bomb" might well be
designed to explode at the end of its flight
so as to prevent recovery. Should it sur-
vive, however, its point of impact could be
calculated from its trajectory to.within a
few square miles. In favorable conditions.
such an object should be recoverable by a
ship such as the Alcoa Seaprobe, whose
bottom-scanning sonar can resolve targets
of 2 feet at a distance of 300 feet.
? Satellites. Most satellites burn up in
rye atmosphere. and such fragments as
survive are of only metallurgical interest.
Reconnaissance satellites may be pro-
grammed to release packages designed for
recovery. and on five or six occasions. ac-
cording to a source who declines to be
named. Soviet satellites have released such
packages while not over the Soviet Union.
Unfortunately the packages are also de-
signed to explode in this eventuality. attd
no instance is. known of such an object
reaching the ocean intact.
? Hydrophones. Hydrophone arrays
can be deployed strategically for detecting
the other side's missile submarines or.
tactically, for defending particular targets.
The distinction is important because of
the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation
Talks) agreement banning interference
with the other side's "national means of
verification." The phrase, usually under-
stood to refer to satellites. has not been
publicly defined but, according to a State
Department official. it probably includes
strategic hydrophones. The United States
maintains a, strategic hydrophone network.
SONUS, which covers about a third of the
Atlantic'and Pacific oceans. (It was appar- f
ently through SONUS that the collapse of
the salvaged Russian submarine was de-
tected and pinpointed.) The Soviet Union
does not have a strategic network and all
its hydrophones, being 'tactical, are there-
fore fair game. Recovery of a deep-sea h,.-
Conception by Willard Bascom for recovery ql a vessel from deep wafer. The tongs weigh `o n:err:
tons and, like those used with the Glomar Explorer, would be towed independently to the'ai:,;re
site. The tongs are attached to a drill pipe and their weight is ol).cet hr bun taut cylinder.:. [Fr,,!,::;,:
article by Bascom in Science. 15 Oc t,iher 1971, pp. 201-691
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structi,,.rintegrity on sinking, submarines marine is rr-'orted to belohg to a category,
drophone might not be worthwhile,. since get b broken. On passing their design the.Golf which has a displacement
the individual sensors are less important depth, they implode and the hull either weight of 2600 tons. Estimates obtained
than the wqy their information is pro: breaks at that point .or is gravely weak- by Science for the submarine's likely dead-
cessed. On the other hand, ability to locate ened. The submarine then. accelerates weight range from 2000 to 8000 tons, and
and reach the other side's. hydrophones downward, crashing into the sea bottom at several newspapers. cite a figure of 4000?
might open up various. possibilities for in- sometimes remarkable speeds. The Thresh- tons.. But the lifting capacity of the Glo
terfering with his network. er, for example, .is held by some estimates. mar Explorer is usually quoted as 800..
Just how far the Glomar Explorer has to have impacted at a speed of 100 knots tons, attributed either to the ship's main.
contributed to opening up the deep ocean (115 miles per hour). Others, however, be- derrick or its submersible barge. which is
floor is hard to sav because, despite the lieve that 25 to 30 knots is the maximum clearly insufficient to raise an entire sub-
profusion of material about the ship's ex- descent speed ,a sinking sub can attain. marine.
ploits, its actual capabilities are far from Whatever its exact impact velocity, the Almost all accounts, mention that a drill
clear. CIA officials disseminated a lot of. structure is almost certain to break up, if pipe with a large claw at the end was used'
information on a semi-official basis for a the accidents with. American submarines to. raise the submarine. (Time, in its dia-.
brief period in March, but are now unwill- are anything to go by. According to Cap- gram, shows four cables, but its text Be-
ing to comment. ",That's a non-starter. lain William Walker, an engineer in the 'scribes the use of piping.) According to
around here," a CIA man told Science i Office of the Oceanographer of the Navy, the Los Angeles Times, the Glomar Ex-
saving bv:wav of explanation that the Rus- i the Scorpion lies with its bow and stern plorer's drill pipe had walls .4 inches thick,
sians had tolerated the U-2's overflights up cods broken off, although the midship sec with. a hollow core 3 inches in diameter. +
until the first official confirmation by tion is fairly intact. The Thresher broke in- Rough calculation suggests that a drill
the United States government. to a greater number of pieces and is sur- pipe of these dimensions, if made of the
Some newspapers gained the impression rounded by a field of debris about half a strongest steel used in commercially 'avail- It
that the CIA, while ostensibly trying to ~ mile in radius. Asked about the apparent able drill pipes, could lift some 3400 tons
.bottle up the story of the Glomar Explorer, raising of the Soviet submarine in one before it started to deform. If the sub-1.
had actually been helpful all along in get- piece Walker said That was quite re- marine weighed 4000 tons. it is hard to see i.
ting it out. There is room for endless specu- 1 markable to. me considering our experience how the Los Angeles Times' drill pipe
lation, but the account best suited to the with the Thresher and Scorpion. I .would could have lifted it in one piece.
agency's purposes might be one that would have expected at. least the bow and stern Rumor in the ocean mining world, how-;
justify the cost of Project Jennifer on the sections to have been fractured off." ever, has.it. that the drill pipe was a massive
one hand, and not humiliate the Russians . If the submarine was indeed in one 16.inches in diameter. Both this and the
on the other. piece, it is hard to reconcile such figures as figures quoted above are reconciled in the
As it happens, the general version that have been published with the magnitude of version given bya mining engineer close to
emerged in public last March fulfills both the operation.. required. The.Russian sub- one of. the contractors for the Glomar Ex
objectives. The Russian submarine. was plorer. The engineer, who declines to be
raised intact. from the ocean floor some identified, says that the ship used different
750 miles northwest of Oahu. the story thicknesses of pipe to construct a tapered
goes. About half way up the 16,500 foot as- drill string, with the pipe at the top having
cent, a rattling of cables was heard on the walls as thick as 6 inches. He states that
Glomar Explorer's deck and two thirds of the Glomar Explorei s derrick had a total
the captured submarine broke away, dam- lifting capacity of about 5000 tons. If its
aging the claws and sinking back to the drill string weighed 1500 tons, the ship,
bottom. The third that was recovered con- would have a lifting capacity of 3500 tons
tained no missiles, no code room, and with which to overcome suction effects and I
maybe, but not definitely, either two nu- raise its payload. Another mining engineer.; clear tippable torpedoes or the evidence for John Miro of Ocean.Resources Inc., San
their existence. Reports that the whole sub- Diego, believes that ship may have used
marine, or two of its nuclear torpedo war- steel cables to assist the drill pipe.
heads had been recovered, were specifically It is hard to distinguish whether a lifting
denied. capacity of this order would have been de-
While this version of events may be signed to lift the whole submarine. or just a
accurate, it contains a number of implaus- single large fragment of it. (If the Russian;
ibilities that raise questions about the submarine broke into three pieces, like the
semi-official version. For one thing, the Scorpion, with its midships intact, this,
ability to raise the total bulk of a subma- section might amount to a large fraction .
rine from a depth of 16.500'feet would be of its total tonnage.)
an advance of some two orders of magni- If the submarine was indeed in pieces, it
tude beyond the current state of the, art would have been much easier to salvage,
(Alcoa Seaprobe can raise 50 tons from and has quite possibly been retrieved in its
18,000 feet.) Scholley. Alcoa M.arine's entirety. If, on the other hand, the Glomar
president, says flatly that "There is no way Explorer succeeded in lifting the entire
on God's green earth that they i outd have submarine, as the semi-official version
lifted the whole submarine up. claims. the ship should have little trouble
For another, the chances that the CIA in recovering the two thirds which dropped
found the submarine in one piece seem in back, especially since the second descent of
fact to be less than overwhelming. Unlike the stricken submarine would almost cer
surface ships which tend to maintain their. tainly shatter it into easily retrievable
fragments.-NICHOLAS WADE
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