Sea Shadow
When one hears the words, “stealth ship” it’s easy to get excited. Imagine our excitement when I saw the first one known to exist, abandoned, decaying, rusting away in front of my own eyes. Though this ship was small, at 164 feet from bow to stern, I couldn’t believe that we had infiltrated the row of the Mothball Fleet in Suisun Bay that held the IX-529 Sea Shadow. Perhaps more interesting than the Sea Shadow itself was the drydock it was ensconced within: HMB-1, the Hughes Mining Barge, built by the famed Howard Hughes company for the CIA in the early 1970s. HMB-1 was one part of a two-part structure used to lift the sunken nuclear Russian submarine, K-129, from the ocean Northwest of Hawaii. K-129 was 16,000 feet underwater, so Hughes built the Glomar Explorer, ostensibly as a Manganese mining ship. The real purpose of the Hughes Mining Barge was to submerge and serve as a purpose-built submerged (and hidden) drydock for any remains recovered from the submarine wreck site (including cryptographic code books, secret intelligence from the Soviet Navy, and nuclear munitions); the Glomar Explorer on the other hand, served as the cover story (manganese nodule mining) and as the powerhouse for lifting the gigantic, 2700-ton submarine from the depths of the ocean.
In the end, Clementine, the gigantic claw that was used to lift the submarine failed; the submarine split in half. Most of the important intelligence was lost in the process, and “Project Jennie,” as it was erroneously known by the press, was a failure. By 1983, HMB-1 was mothballed, but it oddly disappeared from Todd Shipyards, where it was being stored. Inquiries from the press reached a dead end – the only thing the Navy could say was that it wasn’t being used to lift a submarine from the water. The real story was that HMB-1 housed the top secret stealth ship, Sea Shadow IX-529. The Sea Shadow was dismantled in 2012, but HMB-1 still exists in Alameda.
Sea Shadow
When one hears the words, “stealth ship” it’s easy to get excited. Imagine our excitement when I saw the first one known to exist, abandoned, decaying, rusting away in front of my own eyes. Though this ship was small, at 164 feet from bow to stern, I couldn’t believe that we had infiltrated the row of the Mothball Fleet in Suisun Bay that held the IX-529 Sea Shadow. Perhaps more interesting than the Sea Shadow itself was the drydock it was ensconced within: HMB-1, the Hughes Mining Barge, built by the famed Howard Hughes company for the CIA in the early 1970s. HMB-1 was one part of a two-part structure used to lift the sunken nuclear Russian submarine, K-129, from the ocean Northwest of Hawaii. K-129 was 16,000 feet underwater, so Hughes built the Glomar Explorer, ostensibly as a Manganese mining ship. The real purpose of the Hughes Mining Barge was to submerge and serve as a purpose-built submerged (and hidden) drydock for any remains recovered from the submarine wreck site (including cryptographic code books, secret intelligence from the Soviet Navy, and nuclear munitions); the Glomar Explorer on the other hand, served as the cover story (manganese nodule mining) and as the powerhouse for lifting the gigantic, 2700-ton submarine from the depths of the ocean.
In the end, Clementine, the gigantic claw that was used to lift the submarine failed; the submarine split in half. Most of the important intelligence was lost in the process, and “Project Jennie,” as it was erroneously known by the press, was a failure. By 1983, HMB-1 was mothballed, but it oddly disappeared from Todd Shipyards, where it was being stored. Inquiries from the press reached a dead end – the only thing the Navy could say was that it wasn’t being used to lift a submarine from the water. The real story was that HMB-1 housed the top secret stealth ship, Sea Shadow IX-529. The Sea Shadow was dismantled in 2012, but HMB-1 still exists in Alameda.