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Explorer began to lift the submarine from its grave, tugging hard to unstick the hull from the seabed. It was a nerve-racking process. The submarine's dead weight of at least 4,000 tons taxed even Glomar Explorer's powerful winches. The ship shuddered and reverberated with the protesting scream of straining electric engines and the scrape of taut steel cables.
At some point in the lift—one estimate places it at about halfway up the 16,000 ft.—the cables rattled. Though the cause remains a secret, the consequence was soon evident. The sub's hull, already weakened and damaged by the explosion and severe water pressures, cracked into two pieces. According to the CIA's account, the aft two-thirds, including the conning tower and the coveted missiles and code room, slipped back to the seabed. The forward third, which remained gripped firmly in the grapnels, was deposited in the still submerged barge. Blowing its water ballast, HMB-1 rose to the surface. Even if only partially successful, as the CIA claims, the mission was a major technological achievement. Nothing so large had ever before been raised from so great a depth.
Aware that the salvage operation would also raise the bodies of the dead Russian officers and men, the CIA had made what it felt was the proper arrangements. The Glomar Explorer was equipped with special cooling facilities that could accommodate up to 100 corpses. In the forward section of the submarine were a number of bodies. While a loudspeaker played a recording of the Soviet national anthem, a funeral service was read in Russian and English. As a CIA cameraman filmed the proceedings in color and sound, the bodies were buried at sea from the Glomar Explorer, each neatly shrouded in canvas.
Part II: Aims of the Mission
Was the Project Jennifer trip necessary? Would it have been worth its high price tag if the entire submarine had been recovered? Some congressional critics of the CIA last week said no; Senator Frank Church suggested that the agency had wasted money on the project, saying, "No wonder we are broke." By contrast, a top CIA official insists that had the project succeeded, it would have been "the biggest single intelligence coup in history."
Such a claim rests on the incredibly complex and ever-changing nature of military technology. To U.S. analysts, the sunken submarine contained a potential treasure-trove of invaluable and hitherto unattainable information. No outsider can imagine the degree to which the U.S. and the Soviet Union are locked in intense competition to gain an edge, no matter how slight, over each other in a whole array of weapons systems and intelligence-gathering devices. Hence each side seeks to find out all it can about the other's weaponry, countermeasures, and research.