The Cold War

waltky · Dec 30, 2012

A dark time coming to light...

Declassified CIA documents shed light on secret Navy mission in Cold War
December 30, 2012 - In late 1971, the Navy brought the deep-diving submersible Trieste II and several support ships out to a spot 350 miles north of Hawaii to retrieve Scripps Institution of Oceanography "instrumentation" from the ocean floor. That was the cover story.

The Trieste actually was tasked by the Central Intelligence Agency with a secret mission to recover a film canister jettisoned on July 10 of that year by a spy spacecraft known as Hexagon. Two film canisters, called "buckets," that had been successfully recovered over the prior month provided images of Soviet missile sites and other sensitive military assets as the Cold War raged. The third canister should have been snagged by an Air Force C-130 aircraft as the film payload floated to Earth beneath a parachute. Instead, the parachute broke from the canister, and the 1,051-pound bucket hit the water at about 307 mph, sinking to a depth of 16,400 feet.

What followed was the deepest underwater salvage operation ever mounted by the U.S. military amid an urgency to recover and examine the film and as worries were raised that the Soviets might catch on or get there first. "Recovery of the film would be most desireable since the imagery recorded was from a particularly productive portion of the mission," John L. McLucas, then-director of the National Reconnaissance Office, said in a 1971 memo.

Details of the recovery mission, declassified during the summer, shed new light on the successful series of satellite spy programs called Corona, Gambit and Hexagon that used Hickam Air Force Base crews and aircraft to recover surveillance footage shot from space. Some of the Hexagon film was recovered from the seafloor but was unusable, and the salvage record would be eclipsed in 1974 by the Glomar Explorer's efforts to raise the Soviet submarine K-129 from nearly 17,000 feet 1,500 miles northwest of Hawaii.

But the Hexagon mission tested new operating depths for the Trieste II and "established a unique capability that enhances the security of the United States," Harold L. Brownman, who was with the CIA, said in a secret May 1972 memo lauding the Navy effort. "This was the first time that an object of this small size had been located and the first time any object had been recovered from this depth," Brownman said.

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Mushroom · Dec 31, 2012

The Trieste went to almost 36,000 feet. The Trieste II only went down to 20,000 feet (this mission only to 17,000 feet). So I really see nothing of importance here, sorry.

Personally, Project Jennifer I think was much more important then this was.

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The Cold War

waltky Well-Known Member

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