Into the Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro

by Rachel Slade

the Hughes Glomar Explorer, a decoy deepwater drilling rig financed by the CIA. The official story was that billionaire Howard Hughes commissioned the vessel for his underwater mining company. In fact, “Project Jennifer” was paid for by the CIA to recover a sunken Soviet submarine lost off the coast of Hawaii. It’s rumored that the sub was sunk when a rogue team of Soviet sailors wrested control and tried to fire a missile at Hawaii, tripping a fail-safe, which caused the missile to explode as it was exiting the torpedo tube. The agency desperately wanted to study the sub to prove that America’s Cold War opponent had equipped its vessel with nuclear missiles and torpedoes. While the Soviets hunted in vain for their lost vessel, Sun Ship’s offshore drilling decoy parked right over the sub, precisely located by the navy’s system of hydrophones in the area, which had heard the doomed vessel explode and sink. Once in position, the belly of Hughes Glomar yawned wide above the ocean floor, dropped a giant claw thousands of feet down, clamped onto the sunken sub, and pulled the mangled wreck up into her hollow hull. After closing up, the operators dewatered the hold and stood in awe of their prize.