Background...
On 24-Feb-1968 a Russian Golf II Class submarine (the K-129 armed with nuclear missiles) leaves Vladivostok, USSR, for routine patrols in the Pacific...
A few days later the U.S. Navy, which had been tracking the K-129, loses contact as the sub nears Hawaii...Then the U.S. begins picking up radio traffic from other Soviet ships in the area attempting to contact the K-129.
After a few days it's obvious the K-129 is lost and a massive search is underway by the Russians.
U.S. analysis of earlier tracking data indicates the Russians have no idea where the K-129 is nor are they looking in the right area. This sub is carrying the latest Soviet missile technology, code books and crypto equipment.
What if the US could find the sub first? What a gold mine!
By mid-July a U.S. sub, the USS Halibut, capable of deep water searching and equipped with state of art intelligence devices, would start the most incredible underwater search ever attempted in history...looking for a small object(s) nearly three miles down on the ocean floor.
The sub deployed her trailing sonar gear, the "fish". Day and night, she trawled back and forth. On board, tired strained eyes pored over miles of recordings, looking for "something" that should not be there!
Every six days or so, the fish needed to be rewound (retrieved) aboard and loaded with fresh film. This went on for weeks as over 40 thousand pictures of the ocean floor are taken. Then the "haze" was disrupted!
The ship's photographer burst out of the darkroom, certain he had found their target! It was a perfect image of a submarine's "sail", or conning tower; additional photos of the object then showed it to be the lost K-129.
This sub and its crew had accomplished an incredible feat, and the pictures tell us the K-129 is resting 16,580 feet down on the sea bed. Further image analysis reveal she suffered an explosion while surfaced, (possibly to recharge her batteries) flooded and then sank basically intact.
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Heading out to tap a cable...
Halibut Insignia...
Returning home with the secrets...
The K-129's discovery was so significant that President Lyndon Johnson awarded the crew with its first Presidental Unit Citation (PUC) in 1968. A later attempt by the CIA & Howard Hugh's Glomar Explorer to recover the sub is another ( and more publicized) chapter in the K-129 story.
This same crew, a few years later, received a second PUC for another incredible underwater feat. They secretly located something even smaller (a communications cable on the ocean floor), accessed it, tapped it, and went undetected, thereby providing our country with covert intelligence for years to come. (President Nixon not only awarded them another Presidential Citation, he secretly flew to their base and did the honors personally.)
One of our classmates ( Gerold Davey) was part of this unit, a key contributor to its success and experienced these events first hand.
Additional "info" is located in Gerold's class "update" message and details about the crew & their accomplishments are posted here...
Crew & Citations
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