The robot had to fly just a few meters over the ocean floor, which required a towing cable that was several kilometers long. Navyįor two months, the Halibut explored the area where the explosion had been detected, dragging a “fish” in search of the remains of K-129. Image of “Halibut,” the American submarine, circa 1965 U.S. The pods were called “the fish” – each one weighed two tons and cost five million dollars. The Halibut – formerly a nuclear-powered missile submarine – had been adapted to undertake “special operations” – a careful way of saying “espionage.” The missile launch ramp had been removed and reinforced with equipment no other submarine had: precision satellite targeting systems, state-of-the-art sonar, a Univac computer and a couple of cable-controlled scout pods. Six months later, the USS Halibut was deployed to the area with the mission of locating and photographing the wreckage that should have been found in the position marked by the hydrophones. The incident intrigued the US Navy enough to investigate what happened. The K-129 – along with its crew of 83 men – was considered lost, with the circumstances surrounding its destruction inconclusive. After two months of unsuccessful attempts, the search was called off. But the recovery operation was unsuccessful: the ocean in the area was almost 5,000 meters deep. The Soviet Admiralty immediately sent rescue ships to the area where they estimated that the sinking had occurred, a move that alerted Western secret services. It was not a particularly modern submarine model, but it was loaded down with three one-megaton nuclear missiles – each one capable of destroying a city. It had left its base in Petropavlosk to go on a routine patrol. They were able to establish the origins and cause: about two thousand kilometers southeast of the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula, a submarine had just suffered a terrible catastrophe In the early hours of March 11 and 12 of 1968, hydrophones located at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean detected two underwater explosions.
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