Glomar Explorer mothballed in Suisun Bay, CA - June 1993. (USGS - Terraserver)
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| Career
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| Ordered:
|
|
| Laid down:
|
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| Launched:
| 1 November 1972
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| Placed In Service:
| 1 July 1973
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| Placed Out of Service:
|
|
| Fate:
| Leased (not SAP)
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| Stricken:
|
|
| General Characteristics
|
| Displacement:
| 50,500 tons full, 1780 tons light
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| Length:
| 188.6 m (619 ft)
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| Beam:
| 35.3 m (116 ft)
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| Draft:
| 14 m (46 ft)
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| Propulsion:
| 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 States Central Intelligence Agency to recover a sunken Soviet submarine, 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 .
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