Thinking Sideways: The Glomar Explorer

all of the legwork on this thing. They'll also notice if you had listened to what we're calling the last twenty six episodes before and you're re listening now, the music and sound effects are gone. Yes, we've we've gone back to straight audio, so be warned. We sound a little different today than we do in what you're about to listen to. Yeah, bye bye, thinking sideways. I don't understand. You never know stories of things. We simply don't know the answer too. Well. Hey there it's the time for

a little unsolved mystery action you guys after that? Okay, Well, first off, my name's Joe, I'm Devin. Okay, let's get rolling here. Uh So, our story starts in nearly seventies. There was a breaking at the Hughes Corporation. The breaking led to the revelation that a ship that had been built by the Hughes Corporation, the Gloomar Explorer, which was ostensibly built for exploration and mining of manganese modules from the ocean floor, was not actually built for that purpose

at all. It was actually part of a CIA project that the Huges Corporation was providing cover for. So the Glomar Explorer was it turns out, not not mining manganese modules at all. It was it was raising a Soviet submarine. What's the manganese module. I'm not even sure what the hell that is, but there, yeah, there. Apparently there are manganese modules on the ocean floor, and manganese as a rare it is a rare metal that's worth a lot

of money, I guess. And so you know, if it weren't so dark and expensive to go retrieve those things off the ocean floor, then we could actually be grabbing those things and you know, utilizing them. But apparently we're not because too much money. Okay. So anyway, as a little aside, you know that the cover story was so effective that some some major corporations actually put a lot of money into researching how to man how to actually

retrieve manganese modules themselves for the ocean floor. And let's see, the joke was on them. So anyway, back to back. So let's go back to Napril night. The Sylvia submarine K sank into Pacific about ere and miles north northwest of Hawaii. It was an early Soviet boomer. And I'm sure you only know what a boomer is, but for a few of you who don't know what a boomer is,

that's a submarine that carries nuclear missiles. The idea being that you know, if somebody launches an attack in your homeland and wipes out like your land based missiles, while you still get some hidden out at sea to fire back at the enemy. We've got them. The Soviets have them, the Bridge and the French have them. Chinese have them. So anyway, that's a boomer. So uh this this is one of the earliest attempts to the boomer. It was

a diesel submarine that had been lengthened. The the sale had been made larger to accommodate three vertically matted nuclear tip missiles. They were liquid fuel and that's probably the wide submarine sank. It is because liquid fuel rockets tend to be a lot more prone to accidents, which is why we used solid fuel rockets on our boomers. So anyway, so it sank. Uh. We didn't know about it at first.

The what happened is the Navy noticed that huge surge of Soviet naval forces into that part of the Pacific, obviously looking for their lost submarine. And so that caused us to go back and review our our socias records. And I'll show you all know what socias is. But socis yeah, but for a few of you don't, so says scratching my head. Yeahs an underwater network of sonar sonar receivers that we've got in certain strategic places around

the world. And there were, and so we actually pick up all kinds of noise and run it to computers and figure out what's going on in the ocean about how we heard the blop the loop probably Oh yeah, it's a listening network. Yeah, it's it's a big underwater listening network. Yeah. Okay, well yeah, I remember the blue but um so anyway, so in response to this, the US went back and reviewed all of its socist records, and determined that yes, indeed there were there were some sounds.

There was first of all a big, a big boom associated with explosion, and then somewhat after that, some of the sounds associated with the implosion or the death of a submarine. So apparently they they probably had a problem with one of their rockets. They surfaced, exploded. They probably

had a problem with one of their rockets. They surfaced, the exploded, and then eventually set the ship wind up sinking in about two miles of water, and so and so using using triangulation, etcetera, we were able to figure out roughly where had gun down. So at that point, and by the way that the project was eventually named Project as Orion, although they code named a Project Jennifer.

It was codenamed Project as Orion, but they told the President was Project Jennifer, because that's just the way they are in the government. I really wanted there to be twenty seven of them. Everybody thinks. Everybody thought it was a Project Jennifer, but actually his Project as Orion. Yeah. Yeah, there's like and so yeah, I mean like, well, there's a guy who was part of the whole thing. He was on the Halibut which was a spy sub that

we're out looking for the wreckage of the submarine. Eventually, like you know, many years later, like in the nineties, he wrote a book about it called Spiceub And in his book, the halibut was called the viperfish exactly everywhere it wasn't. He he couldn't and you know, everybody, the Sovieust, Chinese, all everybody knows it's called the halibut. You know, we all know this, But he was still required to call it something else. So he called up the piper fish.

That's how that's how silly they are about this stuff. Yeah, I know. So the guy's name was Roger Dunham and he was on board the halibut, and the halibut was was equipped to trail an apparatus behind it, which they called the fish. And the fish was basically, remember this isn't this isn't like the early seventies and we didn't

have digital photography and all that stuff. So what they had to do was they had to trail this thing underneath the sub and behind the sub and do race track patters just go up and down in a grid pattern over the ocean floor and then and then regularly haul the thing up back into the boat, pulled off

the film canisters, and developed the film. Yeah, and so eventually the day came and they were they were down there for weeks looking around, and eventually the day came when hey spotted something and so they had pictures of something on the ocean floor, you know, the the K one nine. So they had found what they were looking for. And so at that point that's when it's time to

figure out what to do with it. It was laying on a side one of the missiles that slid out of the top of the sail, and there was just the stock got around that we should probably try to raise it. And so the glow War Explorer was built for that express purpose of raising that submarine to see to explore their missile technology and maybe get to look at the codebooks you knows going on. Uh, And so the Glow Wire Explorer was purpose built for this very mission.

It was it had this thing called the claw that was then it had a moon pool in the middle of the ship. The moon pool was just a big pool that was opened on the bottom, had closing doors, doors that could close, but it could open up and it was at her ninety nine ft long, and then at either end of that there were these crane type arrangements. What essentially what essentially they did was they would lower

down these big steel pipes, slowly lower them down. There's other big machinery pieces that would grab the next piece, these in where I believe sixty ft long piece, and they were threaded on either end, and so you would

lower this thing down all the way. These two pieces of steel they are attached to the claw, and then the cranes bring up two more big huge tubes of steel and and they're threaded into the ones below, yeah yeah, and then those things are slowly lowered, and then and then the next the next pair of tubes are brought up,

threaded in, slowly lowered. So the process of actually getting the claw down to the K one twin yeah yeah, and bringing it back up took many days and so so it was revealed many years after the fact that what had happened. The claw had five claws to it. Essentially, it was like five there were five individual claws that could grasp the submarine and then bring it back up.

And so they unfortunately they had an unfortunate incident. According to what the Navy said the they went down too fast, they slammed the claw into the ocean bottom and yeah, and then they managed to maneuver it over to the Sumner rine that I didn't I don't know, I don't know if I mentioned the claw actually had had like propellers and stuff on it so that they could actually because there was such a long ways away that there was nothing they could do from there and as far

as like like pushing on the pipes or anything to guide this thing. So they had to basically using underwater cameras and lites and everything like that. They would use propellers. They were amounted on this thing to to pull it in various directions to get a centered over where they needed to be and centered over the wreckage. And then

they when they hooked the wreckage with the clock. Yeah, I know this this sounds this This makes me think of have you ever taken a tape major and run it out to about six foot and it's trying to bend and not quite break and you're trying to get it over to touch something and that's that's difficult. And that's just a six foot tape masure. Yeah, this was two miles down a couple of miles down and always down.

It was like very very difficult operation. And yet and yes, I think is the word that comes to mind that too. And and yet somehow, oh they alast on the way up. Um. On the way up, some of the claus broke and the part of the submarine fell apparently, so they actually managed to hook it. Yeah, they actually managed to get this thing wrapped around the sub The cloud was really

like holding on the sub bringing it up. And unfortunately about some of the clause broke on the way back up under the stress, and most of the submarine was lost, and essentially the nose remained and the rest of it broke away. So that is the official story, um so, But of course there's a lot of problems with that story. Did they get the nose, they bring it up. They did bring the nose up. They brought the nose up. They actually found out the remains of some Soviet sailors

and they gave them a burial. Let's sea supposedly, didn't they already have one of those? Yeah, and they didn't. But they didn't find much of value because people's are giant too. Okay, Okay, there's several problems with this story. Okay, the K the K wast long, the sub the sub that they were retrieving, yea long the moon pool of the Glamore Explorer. Wast Long now purpose built for the mission of raising a submarine. That's what. How dot longer

than the moon pool? You kind of got to ask, you know, exactly why they didn't make it longer moon pool? But one question about that. A Navy spokesman said that the plan was to haul it up and then have divers go down and cut the cut the ends of the submarine off because they were mainly interested in the middle park with the where the missiles were. They were just going to cut it off. But that's more than

half of the sub, isn't it. They would have to half cut off almost half, I mean threet it would have to cut it down, and it's them to add no more than I've a little bit of play right five at the most. Yeah, so they're losing a lot of sub there. Well, and it's a sub It's not as if it's just a shell and you cut outside shell and it falls apart exactly. I mean, the process of cutting the ends off is you're talking weeks at least many weeks, because there's framing, there's decks, there's all

kinds of there's piping and two being all. That's the sort of thing they do for you know, months on a dry dock, on a shed. Yeah, exactly. Imagine doing that underwater and you know, especially you know, let's see with waves and everything. And the next problem is that the the next problem is that somehow the nose remained, uh, some of the notes remained in the clause even and

the rest of the sub broke away. But it seems rather unlikely that even if the nose was even if there was damage to the sub, and I'm sure there was, and it wouldn't be so extensive that that the nose wouldn't have been pulled out with the rest of the wreckage out of the clause. It seems rather than likely. And last of all, last of all, how did they get the nose into the moon pool? Because theoretically the nose should have been sticking way out one end of

the clause if it stayed behind. So yeah, so how exactly did they get that nose into the moon pool? And there's there's no wreck close that says, quote unquote, this is what we did correct as and this is how we got the nose in the moon. Yeah. No, they never explained that. Now explained. I'm just thinking, Okay, well, let's let's just run with the let's just run with the story. Okay, Well we we pull it up and

a big chunk of it breaks away. Oh crud. The only part that we've got left is what we meant to cut off and it won't fit in the hole. Well, it's like trying to get something in your car that's too big. You got to tie it onto something and sent it down. And I can just imagine they would have gone in with some kind of cabling and attached the superstructure, let go with the claw, and it would have drifted down own and then they would have craned

it up. That is that is entirely possible. They could have done something like that, could have like you know, I don't know if they had anything on board that was capable of hauling that much weight besides the clots, so but you know, they could have. They could have actually attached cables, dropped it, let it be suspended, bring the claw back down and grab it, bring it back up. So that's entirely possible if that's what they did. I mean,

that's what I'm just thinking. Okay, well, let's just say the story is true, that the cover story that we're that is the cover story for the first story. Let's just say that's true, and it's the only plausible way I could see it happen. I agree with that. Yeah, yeah, So anyway, but it is suspicious that, you know, they would if they custom built the ship, and you know, I don't know anything about structural integrity of ships or

anything like that. I don't know if it was you know, impossible for them to do that to make it actually make it actually that long, you know, especially the moon pool, the ship would have pretty big. It would have had to be very big accommodate that large ball moon pool. Um, but why would you why would you do that? Well? Why would you? Why would you go to all this trouble and expense to raise an obsolete diesel submarine? I mean, yeah, I guess that's the real question, isn't it. There wasn't

There wasn't much in there. I mean, the Soviets had liquid fuel rockets, which was a technology that we had already had abandoned. Solid fuel rockets so it's like the it's not like we were really chone and for their rocket to and of course they were nukes, right, Yeah, so it would have been probably possibly that would have been some usefulness to see in their nuclear warheads and you know, figuring out how tinkering with those a little

bit would have been some usefulness there. But again, you know, uh, it probably would have been easier to just grab one of the rockets that are falling out and just you know, build a much smaller have a much smaller operation that goes down and just grabbed the rocket that's a missile ocean and you know, are their series about these problems? No, no, I I had no theories myself. While I have theories, but I don't believe him very very much. It's a

couple of theories. One is that, oh and I wanted one other thing I wanted to mention too, is that there's a guy who was involved with this project called John Craven who wrote eventually wrote with his memoirs. He was in the Navy, not actually with the Navy, who was a scientist, and he was involved in the sonar search for not only the wreckage of the cave one twenty nine. He was He was the guy that actually orchestrated the search to find it to the sonar records

pinpoint its location. And he also he also was part of the search signed the Scorpion, which was a U S submarine a sanc in night. There's a skip Jack class sub the SINC in the Atlantic off the Azors. So he wrote as a memoirs and his memoirs he said he was talking about projects as oar and he said that he he said that he had seen the photographs that were taken by the hell but and that he was surprised to hear that what the photographs were

of was a diesel submarine. That's what he said. Did he did he say what he thought they were going to be? He now he he didn't say what the photographs were of. He just said basically they it wasn't it was not a diesel submarine. Have these photos ever been released? Not that I know of. No. And this happened again. What was the year they pulled it? That

was the year the submarine sank. It was the early seventies when the same one it was actually okay, okay, yeah, So Free Information Act extends how far back yeah, I don't you know. They usually it's it's I would say,

it's it's long past time to release those things. And actually I have not yet researched, said my bad, I should probably try to find out if any of those photographs have been released, But I really suspect they haven't been released because I suspect what I suspect actually happened is that when the K one twenty nine sank, when a submarine, good hands in the position of the plane, but saying say, for example, uh, the is the runners straight then, and then the stern points have been straightened,

and so you start to sink, and eventually, if you knows is if you if your nose is a little bit, and you'll start going more vertical, and at that point you're control surfaces in the rear submarine basically act like flutes on an arrow, and so they drive you down or drive you down where's essentially you're gonna You're gonna wind up going straight down. So if the came one twenty nights, when the came on sank, I'm guessing that

probably it went and nose first. The nose was completely demolished, and so that's why they maybe felt very comfortable saying that they recovered the nose because the nose no longer existed anyway. What I believe is that the Glomar Explorer and one that was built for another mission, It performed

that mission and land later on. As part of their little cover story, they went out to this part of the Pacific where this thing had been with a submarined sunk and they parked out there for weeks and pretended to raise the wreckage of the submarine. That is my belief. Now what whatever it was actually raised, I'm not sure it could have been. It could have been the wreckage

of the Scorpion, which I mentioned a few minutes ago. Uh, there was a lot of there was actually speculation of the submarine in community that the Scorpion had been sunk for the Soviets. So there probably was ovation to raise the wreckage and find out what precisely had sunk the scorpion. So how big was the scorpion? Well, that's the problem. Scorpion was two ft long big for that. Yeah. Well, um, when it hit it kind of kind of hit notes first.

So what happened is part of the after section telescoped in, so it did get it did get compressed someone I was I was doing a little research to try to find out exactly how extensive the damage was and how short, basically, how short that the scorpion had become from its impact.

I've seen pictures. Of course, these could be doctored pictures too, because you know, if they if it turns out that they they were able to take on the water pictures of the scorpion, but if actually it exts torpedo, they would probably airbrush that because you know, because I'm admitting that Sylviets have declared and they basically declared war on you by committing an active war, and then you've got

to do something about it. So the story that I heard, I know some submariners UM, and submariners have noticed a silence service because they never talked about their stuff. But of course they talk all the time. I've heard from a couple of them that, yeah, the the scorpion was in their boats and main revenge but you know, hockey okay, um. So that and I have also be reader that the Navy had indeed wreckage somewhere, but again it could be just pure garbage, this purebs who knows. So anyway, it's

a mystery. So we don't know. I could have been the wreckage of maybe an experimental Sylvia's subresparent, one of our experimental submarines. It could have been a UFO. So when after so obviously we don't know exactly what it did. But after this mission, what did they do with the Glomar Explorer? And the Glomar Explorer got refitted? Actually, you know, I had the good force and actually see the Glomar Explorer. It was right here in Portland. That was like I

somewhere in there. I was taking a jet road right you know the jet boats. They're right by the the USS Blue Back, the Mighty Blue Back down Hotly. Yeah, yes, I took a jet boat ride. And then we went up to a Cascade General shipyard. On the outside of the shipyard was nothing, no less than the Glomar Explorer. I was here for a refit apparently they forget, I forget exactly what they refitted it for. But it's still in service sie ft Long so it's just starting. So, so,

how how wide was the moon pool? How what is the moon pool? Yeah, I'm just trying. I'm trying to get a general scale of the of the glomar. So, like, how long? How big is the Yeah? I mean, is it a giant block up floating in the ocean essentially, or I'm just trying to get an idea of what it actually looks like a ship. I've actually got a picture here. Yeah, it's six nineteen feet long, as you can see. You can see in those towers there. Those are the towers that those those great big steel pipes

going there are in. Oh, so that I'm glad you showed me the photo because it looks just like any other ocean going vessel. I expected this thing to be some crazy widening to accommodate the weight in the poll and all of that. You thought it would look like some sort of floating dry dock. Yeah, essentially that's what I would have expected it. Yeah, but no, it's like, yeah, six six nine ft long, it's got a regular bow and everything. It's just got that fantastine feet and beam.

Let's take a look at this. So anyway, it was mothball, eventually refitted um and eventually got sold off and it's still in service today sort in vessel for felling radiation out of it. Yeah, asked me again, Uh, do you know what they're doing thing like that. Yeah, it was. It was converted in Cashi general was modified to a what they call a dynamically to drilling ship capable of drilling of waters of Fetu, and it was some modification up to like eleven eleven thousand, five hundred feet. So

it's yeah, Devin's right, is a genet drilling ship now? Yeah? Yeah, basically yeah, it's it's yeah, like like kind of like an oil platform. I think probably more for exploration that actually, and it was probably probably too valuable thing to actually

uses as an oil platform. But yeah, so it's still in service, and who knows, you know, knowing that maybe they're obsessed with secrecy, which is probably still a couple of cood books lying around and some old Yeah, so the huge corporation built this, and and when when the huge corporation went down, I mean, did any other information

ever come out? I mean, I know he was a fanatic for secrecy, but I'm just curious if anything ever slipped out other than that break in that initially told us what was going on, not not that I am aware of now, the yeah, it is all it is all still secret. I mean, they're pretty good about keeping secrets, believe it or not, do we know if that break in was motivated by it could have been motivated, but as I desire to get the cover story out there,

um you know, because obviously which cover story? Yeah, exactly, there's there's always more than one. Well no, no, I'm serious. So what was the cover story? Originally original cover story was that it was built for the mining of manganese modules break in. Yeah, and then there was a break in it which blew that cover story apparently. Um so, now so now we got to the next cover story, which is they're raising an obsolete diesel submarine off off

the Pacific Ocean floor. Okay, except that that doesn't hold water, no pun intended. But but you know, but cover stories are always like that. You never have just one. You have. They're like a like an onion as you peel back the layer get to the next stinky yeah, exactly. So it's it's possible that the break innitian. It could have entirely possible that for some you know, perhaps they wanted to tweet the Soviets a little bit. You know, that's true.

What's the seventies and it's in the still in the Cold War, yeah. Perhaps, you know, they didn't necessarily want to tell the truth about why exactly they had built the ship and done whatever they've done with it, but they decided to be kind of fun to like tweet the Soviets. You know, we've already done what we wanted to do with it. Let's let's take it out the Pacific parkts somewhere, pretend to be raising their sub and then we'll have that, and then we'll blow our little

cover story and tweet the souls. Are there any wild theories? I mean, any theories out there? Is that they are weird and crazy? That I mean, I have not heard any of this. This this thing is like not really theory circuit. This thing is not really huge. Okay, it's actually not. It's not a story that a lot of people are really into. I was waiting to hear that this was where we discovered velcro or something crazy like law right, explain that timing right? No, exactly there, It

wasn't the ocean floor. How is this? Look at this? Wow, I could hold my shoes together. It's perfect. Ye Oh God, who doesn't. Are we going to do a show about Crow? We'll have to, Yeah, we'll have to do that this week's with Bevell Crow. Well. Anyway, that's about it for the story. If I if I think of anything that I overlooked in this particular story, I'm listeners, I will just sandwich it in at the beginning in the next story. There you go, or we just we can just update

the post on the website. We can do that as well. Can I see that. I'm I'm going to continue to research this story. It's a fascinating story, and I think that someday we'll probably find out what they actually did with the Glomar Explorer say podcast. Okay, but okay, So for those of you are interested in following up or more fascinating details, or you know, if maybe you just want to, like you know, go over it again, just be sure you have it all down right. Write us

about the story or anything like that. It's Thinking Side Aways podcast at gmail. Okay, okay. And also if you would like to write us if you're somebody out there, like first, say, say, for example, if you're Dr John Craven and you want to talk about you know, some of the details of that stuff, we would love to hear from you. Anybody else out there. Also, Roger Dunham. You please also write to us is Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail. That's it for tonight or today anyway. That's

it for today, so we'll see you next week. For now, guys, I'm Joe by Aliens. It's aliens, Aliens. Yes, it's the Aliens. Somebody agrees with me. Finally