Project Azorian Submarine Recovery Failure

In 1974, during Project Azorian, the CIA used a deep-sea drillship platform named the Hughes Glomar Explorer, funded by Howard Hughes, to recover the Soviet submarine K-129, which sank northwest of Hawaii. The mission, one of the Cold War's most covert and costly, aimed to retrieve nuclear missiles and codebooks, but a mechanical failure caused most of the sub to break off and remain on the ocean floor.

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