five Nordberg 16-cylinder diesel engines driving 4,160 V AC generators turning 6 x 2200 HPO (1.6 MW) DC shaft motors, twin shafts
Speed:
10 knots
USNS Glomar Explorer (T-AG-193) is a large ship currently being used as a deep-sea drilling platform. The vessel originated in a secret plan by the United StatesCentral Intelligence Agency to recover a sunken Sovietsubmarine, the K-129, as part of Project Jennifer. Because the K-129 had been lost in very deep water, a massive ship would be needed for the recovery operation. Such a vessel would be easily spotted by Soviet spies, so an elaborate cover story was developed. The CIA contacted eccentric businessman Howard Hughes, who agreed to go along with the story. Hughes told the media that he was building the ship in order to extract manganese nodules from the ocean floor. The cover story became surprisingly influential, spurring many others to examine the idea. At the time, the ship was widely known as the Hughes Glomar Explorer.
The ship managed to recover a portion of the submarine when it reached the site in 1974. The United States government planned to continue to use the ship to do recovery operations, but a Los Angeles Times story in 1975 blew the cover of the operation. For many years, the Explorer sat in Suisun Bay, until it was retrofitted for drilling operations in the late 1990s, and is now operated by Global Marine Drilling.
A few years later the wealthy eccentric Howard Hughes constructed the GlomarExplorer, an enormous barge built for the ostensible purpose of mining manganese nodules from the ocean floor.
In reality, the GlomarExplorer was built as part of an audacious CIA effort to retrieve the Golf.
Tense moments passed onboard the GlomarExplorer, as the crew steeled themselves for the nuclear explosion that many expected when the lost warhead smashed into the ocean floor.
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