Project AZORIAN (ранее ошибочно известный как Project JENNIFER)

Howard Hughes, the CIA and a mysterious ship in the Bay Area

The Glomar Explorer was a giant vessel ostensibly built by the reclusive Hughes that was shrouded in mystery and speculation in the mid-1970s. With this memory in mind, I headed to The Chronicle’s archive to search for Glomar stories and photos. The Chronicle ran a story on Nov. 21, 1972, announcing that Hughes had established a research base in Redwood City in preparation for a “highly imaginative assault on the mineral-rich ocean floor.” Surveillance cameras follow anyone who approaches the barge, and guards with big pistols walk beside you on board. The CIA spent $500 million to finance Project Azorian, the construction of vessels for a mission to salvage a Soviet nuclear-equipped submarine that had sunk in 1968 off the coast of Hawaii. After this top-secret mission, the Glomar Explorer would spend a few years as part of the Mothball Fleet in Suisun Bay, until 1978, when the ship got a million-dollar retrofit by Lockheed Missiles & Space Co. of Sunnyvale, to be used for underwater mining. At the end of the drilling mission, the Glomar returned to the Bay Area Mothball Fleet until 1996, when Astoria Metal Corp. spent $150 million to convert it into a new floating oil drilling platform. The Glomar’s barge remains in the Bay Area, with Bay Ship & Yacht Co. of Alameda having converted it to the only dry dock on the West Coast to be fully enclosed by a retractable roof. // www.sfchronicle.com