Tragic Loss of K-129 Ballistic Missile Submarine
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ย. 2024
- The shocking loss of the Soviet Union's most modern diesel-electric ballistic missile submarine was kept secret by the Kremlin. But, the United States knew an explosion had occurred in the middle of the North Pacific and began a years long program to investigate this seismic disturbance.
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I suppose if one has to die on a submarine due to an accident, going so fast that you're still mid-sentence reading a book would be far better than a slow dive into the depths waiting for the end. Another solid video, thank you.
I'd prefer having forewarning as I'd have time to sort out my thoughts, accept my death and perhaps write out a will. I'm more scared of dying in my sleep.
@@Edax_Royeaux You'd likely want to make your will well before. Like as soon as you have assets that you want to go to specific people then you should make a will, you can always amend it in the future.
@@cheekarp2180 I already have a standard will, but it doesn't go into such detail as to who gets my vinyl records or my ship models.
@@Edax_Royeaux If you were in the military you should have one.
FOR THE ALGORITHM!!!
Needs to be seven words or more for the algorithm
FOR THE ALGORITHM!!!
FOR THE ALGORITHM!!
@@montys420- For the algorithm! One two three four
@@alexandergaus493 💯
If you haven’t read it before, I very highly recommend reading the book ‘Blind Man’s Bluff’. It’s one of my absolute favorites about submarine espionage during the Cold War and has chapters that cover everything from the K-129 and project Azorian to the USS Scorpion and the role of the Halibut.
Try "Red Star Rogue"
Excellent book.
And a good fallow on book
“The silent war” by john p craven talks in depth about
This event but you have to read between the lines so to speak since it was such a highly classified project.
The book is a fantastic read .
I'm the one Army guy in a family of Navy sailors - grandpas, dad, uncles, cousins - even my son. Me? I was drafted for Vietnam. Anyway, I've been reading military data for years - sooo boring. But you're a GREAT narrator, a story teller. You turn boring military reports into mystery cliff hangers. You also have extensive "at sea" time backing you up. You are a treat to follow and at 76, I'm a tough guy to entertain. Thank you for all your impressive efforts - keep telling us the 'haps' (an Army term, you wouldn't understand).
I would love to hear a sub-brief on Project Azorian! Even knowing what kind of advances we've made in machining and undersea exploration, the ability to go down and retrieve ever a part of K-129 is incredible to me.
I'm sorry, but I can't help but laugh a little every time I hear 'Kamchatka" because some kind of mishap is bound to ensue at some point. I blame Drachinifel for that.
Do you see torpedo boats?
Well, we’re talking about the folks that were ok with losing 5% to casualties during army maneuvers.
I’ll never forgot the Soviet Ukrainian Colonel telling my dad, around 1993, something like “you Americans, if you’re too afraid to have soldiers die in training, how can you expect to fight a war”. Different mindset.
Same folks at Baskin Robbins: “you have THIRTY ONE flavors? How did you do this? We have white vanilla and painted dark vanilla, we call it chocolate”. Even their ice cream was faked.
He and Dad traded stories and old service gear, I have his Soviet dress blouse and a couple Soviet sub service wrist watches.
The cover story given at the time was the Explorer was looking for manganese nodules, for deep sea mining as there were Soviet subs & ships in the area watching them
Comment for the algorithm (and curiosity): I wonder where the CIA put K-129 later. Mystery warehouse someplace?
Those brave sailors died doing what they loved. I wish them the best wherever they are now. I think it's really respectable that you treat all submariners as humans, despite the fact that these men would have been your "adversaries" during your service. I think that's the sign of a good fella - the ability to acknowledge we're all human, and we are in many ways living the same experiences, just in different places, with difference cultures.
My reading of things even going back to WWII: Countries have political and military ambitions. Soldiers and sailors fight for their countries, but mainly just try to survive. The sea, above everything else, is ALWAYS trying to kill a sailor. Sailors in ships fight enemy ships. Once that enemy ship is down, you rescue the sailors if at all possible without risking your own. THAT is the law of the sea for sailors of all nations. After all, that could be you in the water.
An interesting narrative discussion on this is in the novels 'Run Silent, Run Deep' and the follow-up 'Dust on the Sea' in which Capt Richardson continues to question the morality of his actions to end the life of Bungo Pete. No one blames him or questions his actions under the circumstances, but he continues to hate himself for breaking the sailor's code, even if it was for the sake of his service and fellow sailors.
I did some inspection work for a client and the other two witnesses were former submariners. One Russian and the other Royal Navy. Lovely to watch them “dancing” around each other for the duration of the contract.😊
I love the K-129 saga. I think I’ve read every book I can find on it. Including the one you showed. Excellent book. There’s also a great book on The Halibut. Can’t recall the name.
Awesome, thank you!
I was very confused for like 30 seconds since i just watched k-219 accident last night and was like “Wait didn’t he already do this one?”
You may want to check out the fascinating and well written book, "Red Star Rogue" for a more controversial account of this tragic story. One of the claims made was that satellite photography shows a heat plume in the area indicative of the boat suffering an explosion while on the surface.
Further, a sailors body was discovered on the sea bed wearing the Soviet surface coat and was evidentially on the bridge when the explosion occurred.
I won't say any more, but some here may want to check out the book.
I agree. It’s a fascinating book.
Great book. I believe it claims the extra crew on board were shadow missile techs, for lack of a better term.
Being a lifelong submarine enthusiast, I appreciate these interesting and informative videos.
I do wonder about these Soviet subs checking in with the fleet command via radio once or twice a day. Wouldn't that enable American listening stations to triangulate their positions and thus show the US Navy where these ballistic missile subs were at any given time?
Isn't the point of ballistic missiles that your enemy should knows about them? Because if you actually use them, both sides lose so they aren't a practical weapon. "Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?" -Dr. Strangelove
@@Edax_Royeaux There's a difference between knowing they exist, and knowing exactly where they are though. The former makes sure your second-strike threat is recognized, the latter is going to 'disappear' all those subs your adversary found if you end up in a war with them
@@williamnixon3994 Doesn't matter if the subs eventually disappear, once they get all their missiles off (which they can do very quickly), it would only be a symbolic victory to sink them. It's not like their going to be able to return to port in the post-apocalypse to rearm with more missiles.
@@Edax_Royeaux Trust me, anyone with half a brain knows that. It's why you want as much information about their location as soon as possible so that threat is neutered on the outbreak of non-nuclear war. Want to make sure those subs can't get their missiles off if their leader decides to press the big red button after declaring war
I have seen a lot where they think it was an attempted unauthorized launch and the missile had a tamper protection
I first heard about K-129 by reading a very fascinating book titled "Red Star Rogue". The author lays out his evidence to come to the conclusion that she was taken over by a KGB Osttsnaz (spelling?) group that had been put on board at the last minute. The KGB's reason for doing this was to make the K-129 launch a missile at Pearl Harbor from a shorter range than their own would be launched from in order to make it look like the Chinese had attacked the US. (The Soviets had sold older Golf 1s to China, but had broken off friendly relations with them and viewed them as enemies on near equal footing as the US by the late 1960's. So by framing the Chinese in an attack on the USA they hoped that their two enemies would destroy each other.) I found what he laid out rather convincing. Though I haven't looked at any of the other stuff out there about the K-129 so I'm not sure if he saw what he wanted to see, or if he was actually on to something. If it's the former, he did well enough to convince me and shame on me for not learning more about the subject. If it's the later, then that is a seriously scary thing to think about.
Yep, this plausible documentary treatment of the disaster checks a LOT of boxes as to one of the most credible possible speculative explanations and I choose to think its content is far superior to Mr Sub Brief's video presentation.
It’s a fun read but IMO the premise doesn’t make sense. Suppose the mission was successful and they frame the Chinese for nuking Pearl Harbor. Then what? An isolated strike is pointless. The Chinese would deny responsibility and make no offensive moves. The Russians and the Chinese blaming each other while neither military attempts any follow up it would make it obvious to the CIA that one of them is trying to false flag the other. Fallout testing would travel signs of a Russian warhead. The Russians, of course, would never admit it and once it becomes obvious that it wasn’t the Chinese they would make up some nonsense like it was one of our own reactors exploding or something. The Soviet Union would be viewed as a rabid pariah state, too dangerous for both the US and Chinese to allow to live any longer
*Very yes please* on the Project Azorian sub brief. I'd love to hear your take on that absolute madness!
US Navy: We only recovered the first 40 feet of the ship. Oh, and here's the ships bell from the conning tower.
Interesting mooring arrangement. Must make replenishement, personnel movements *very* time-consuming.
One of the big advances with mooring alongside is that you expose the whole vessel for replenishment, to gangways, cranes etc.
(Which is why cargo ships are parked alongside.)
In the US NAVY, that form of mooring was known as "MED MOORING", and American surface ships generally had to do this in the port of Naples, Italy [during the Cold War], for example.
I did it back in 2012 when my ship visited Vladivostok for the V-E Day celebrations.
Would love a brief on the Halibut!
Awsome going all the way back to Golf...crazy N. Korea is still able to use in some capacity as a threat so many years later. 👍content
Given the K129 was in 16,000 ft of water and I KNOW the test depth of Halibut was nowhere even close to that, how did they get the pics? Must have had one heck of long array tethered to the "fish" cameras?
The "fish" is towed from a long tether housed in the submarine that can be retracted.
I do have that book. Hardcover and all. Awesome book. It's amazing what we can do when we set our minds to it (not to mention almost unlimited budget, of course lol). I've always been fascinated by Project Azorian, ever since I read "The Hunt for the Red October" when a Russian character mentions the Glomar Explorer, and by then I thought, 'hey, this is fiction, right?' I was amazed when I found out it wasn't. I'm looking forward to a Sub Brief about the Hallibut and another one about Azorian. Excelent stuff, sir, keep it up!
Great as usual.I found the switmming fish disctracting though...Thank you david
nice touch, who doesn't like aquarium immersion .. :)
I think a Subbrief about the recovery of that sub would be great. Thx.
2:10: With Nuclear Submarines today, does the turbine drive the propellor directly, or does it drive an electric motor?
I believe it was the same principal with diesel electric sub. For silent mode
with a few exceptions, nuke subs are propelled by steam turbines going thru a double reduction gear set to the prop. We have also experimented with turbine electric drive.
@@kevincook1018 I would imagine the double reduction gears would be a potential source of noise and vibration that a generator, motor set could reduce substantially… with the benefit of being able to operate with the nuclear plant operating at a significantly reduced level while drawing power from the batteries if the mission required it…
@@hypercomms2001 You are correct that gears result in more noise than an electric motor. The gear noise is minimised by precision machining and by mounting the entire gearset on resilient mounts in the engine room. On a nuke ship the main purpose of the battery is emergency recovery in case of a reactor scram or other casualty. The battery is much smaller than a diesel ship. You wouldn't be able to go far on battery power alone. Subs have a 'secondary propulsion motor" that can move the ship at 5 knots or so in an emergency.
Definitely interested in an "Azorian" follow-up doc!
Please adjust your overlays so that there is more efficient use of space. Your videos tend to use small element as it is. Having ~20% of the space taken up by pretty background makes chat and a lot of the text in the presentation unreadable and the photos to small to see anything. I do applaud your effort to bring this info to the public. And hope you continue to make content.
"Red Star Rogue" explains EXACTLY what happened to K-129
Guys. This is a fictional book.
The story is just fabricated. Nothing more nothing less.
The books is meant to entertain you, so you would mention it, And the author sells more books, because everyone now knows the book 😂
That's what good authors do.
Right a story, make if famous. Put a little bit "conspiracy theory" into it an Viola you have 1000+ more people buying the book.
Look at the history of the Russian navy and what happened to K-219 and to K-141 "Kursk" and you know exactly what REALLY happened to K-129.
Typical Russian maintenance and design failures happened.
Shady Russian maintenance combined with total secrecy about that shady maintenance towards the crew is happened.
That's what destroyed K-129.
Nothing more, nothing less.
You should watch a fewer Hollywood movies. 😂
10:56 The US doesn’t dock ships the way Russia does because we learned our lesson about bunching ships up together at Pearl Harbor.
I’ve always found myself drawn to anything regarding K-129 along with USS Scorpion. Unlike other maritime mysteries, most of the info regarding them isn’t unknown, just classified. The most important details are likely hidden. Who knows how much the story changes once they are known
Great work Sub Brief. Fantastic video.
Much appreciated!
@@SubBrief loved you video too on Australian Collins Class submarines
Scuttlebutt has that someone was trying to launch a missle and that another person stopped it from happening
Floating drydocks do not draw very much water.
Listening to documentary information about submarine disasters pokes my thalassophobia so much.
Great story! To bad the claw broke that would have been a huge coup. I wonder where the torpedos went?
The book "red star rogue" by Kenneth sewell and clint Richmond, puts forward an intriguing hypothesis as to what they think occurred,covers project azorian in detail too,an interesting read
I said it before, the Navy is fucking horrifying.
Please do a sub brief on the ship that picked up K-129!
Interesting that diesel-electric subs in the late 50's/early 60s were using the exact same propulsion scheme as a Toyota Prius.
More like diesel-electric locomotive in scale though.
You had me at KoA shipyard!
Your wording on the slide is probably fine. It wouldn't just be the rupture of the missile body but of the warhead itself to contaminate those sailors as per the first bullet point unless one or both of the torpedoes warheads were also ruptured. There was no other sources of plutonium to give that reading.
Have you ever done anything in the “Gulf of Tonkin incident” I’d like to put in a request as it was pivotal in wotld history even if it involved surface vessels.
If you haven’t, I would love to see the follow up to this.
You really ought to read the book, K129.
We called it, (mooring stern to..) a Med moor.
Did it all the time in... you guessed it! In the Med.
1600 rpm. Lol. I bet it’s half that. At least for diesel electric.
While the US did tragically lose 2 subs early in the age of nuclear subs, it boggles my mind that the soviets/russians lost so many so recently.
i dont think its suprising... maintaining a submarine i imagine is very expensive and very difficult especially without warm water ports... so it was inevitable given how a lot of soviet stuff has been rusting away
Still more survivable than being a member of a tank crew in the Russian army.
@@Fred-vy1hm As compared to the German Army?
The Soviets put a lot of effort into auto-loaders and other mechanisation to get the tank crew down to three. NATO still cram four into their tanks. This is one of the many issues with passing NATO tanks to the AFU - crews that abandoned broken Soviet-era tanks are three-man, and so you’d need to add someone to do the munitions loading and retrain the existing crew.
@@boggisthecat and then they put the ammo under the three crew members.
@@sprucemaroose
A ready-rack higher up in the vehicle is more likely to get hit than the carousel that sits low down. There is no perfect solution. Iterations of vehicles usually improve on issues. Look into the first Bradley IFV models, with their poorly-placed fuel tanks.
I've been on a "Golf" submarine, surprised to see the top of the three diesel engines are almost even with the lower deck.
Yahoooooo!!!!
We were driving by San Francisco Bay my dad pointed out the Explorer as it was sitting there proud in the mothball Fleet next to all the warships
It's nice when you see something in your feed that you KNOW will be GOOD.🙏
Yes, thanks
LIKED, COMMENTED, A WE'RE AT COMBAT DEPTH! LETS GO!
I remember reading a Soviet sailor was discovered by the halibut ROV in full wet gear was laying a few yards from the wreck on the sea floor?
Is it strange that with all the forces in an implosion that the sailor was still holding a book?
Pretty common for muscles/hands to tense up during certain types of brain damage.
The older Gato-class USS Halibut had an interesting career, especially her 10th (and last) war patrol...
...I would suggest doing a report on the Halibut's...erm, "casualty" (in the singular sense) is way too insufficient to describe the damage she survived...
...and I'm not sure how classified magnetic anomaly detection was when you served on submarines, but that topic would be quite interesting for you to cover (especially considering what happened to the first USS Halibut!)
not sure what the point of putting the stream chat on screen is, i absolutely cannot read it . and I'm on a large 4K display. it just makes the informational slides smaller for no reason
For a second I thought Jive is covering the event live 🤦♂️
There any chance the extra personnel were on the sub performing some kind of repair or diagnostic function? Like how commercial vessels sometimes have a crew on board at sea performing maintenance or renovative work? Still favor your explanation, but it's a thought.
that must be kind of satisfying when a cold war adversary pops his tin can.
Now that you're on the USS Halibut I'm reminded of the "super ping" gag the US Navy pulled on the Russians by tapping their sea cable that transmitted orders to the Russian subs.
Great story. Did they bring the wreck to land, or did they examine it on the boat?
there were techs on the boat due to previous issues and fixes were being done during the deployment
Thanks for the incredible video as always. I have a question: how did the halibut take those photos if the wreck was 16k’ down, when the halibut could not go anywhere near that deep? Was the camera/light cable just extremely long?
it was a tethered ROV.
Yes
Nuclear testing sensors or Pacific SOSUS?
Keep the excelent work man!!
Thanks, will do!
The Navy hat DOESNT make you look more qualified. Lol
Hey Jive. The recording quality seemed lower than your usual standards, and with having the smaller window to allow you to show chat I found it hard to see the photos. I really enjoyed the content but would appreciate being able to see your high quality photos if you continue doing this live format.
This was a new service I used for two months last year. You are right, it is lower quality and that is why I don't use it anymore. This video is a year old.
Wow!
I thought you were going to post this on Friday
This is not the Sub Brief for February 2023. That releases in about 5 hours.
@@SubBrief okay can't wait I love updates on the ddgx
@@SubBrief just subscribed to supply on your patreon
Called med mooring. Only way I could Moore in Naples, It
The missile compartment theory, only has one problem, there is sea water instrumentation in the bulges, that is designed to detect sea water leaking into the submarine they trigger alarms, the crew would have been trained in these procedures. Also if the sea water pressure, pushes past the external seals, in most certainly would have pushed by the internal seals and the whole sub would have filled with sea water. Also russian daily procedures, was to check the missile bay, so any leaks would have been reported.
That was supposed to be the basis for the story "The Hunt for Red October"! Those extra crew were alleged to have attempted a mutiny type attack where they take control of the submarine and launch live missiles on Hawaii. The story goes that the submarines crew refused to participate, and with the submarines officers refusing to cooperate, it resulted in any missile launch incinerating the submarine opposed to launching. The CIA apparently recovered the entire submarine, had evidence that they attempted to make it look like a chinese submarine to make America blame china instead of Russia. Kissinger allegedly presented this evidence to the chinese which massed troops on their border with Russia at the time.
I’m unclear on the concept. In diesel electric boats, didn’t the sub have to be surfaced to snorkel for the diesel to run and charge the batteries? Otherwise where would the combustion air come from?
you are right. And they can raise the snorkel while submerged and bring in air that way as well.
did aaron end up doing a sub brief on the halibut?
It's a series hybrid
The welds arent going to be the weak spots. Its the heat affected zone just outside the welds. The welds are almost certainly stronger than the base metal.
Hi Sub, tell you what i wouldn't mind a Dies-Elec over Nuke for a few reasons.
Please do the Halibut.
Welds are stronger than metal.
We knew or at least we didn’t think it was a nuclear explosion. The shape of the shockwave was wrong for a nuclear detonation.
It was theorized that the Soviets may have tested a new type of nuclear explosive but there wasn’t any evidence of that. Nobody could even think of a way that a nuclear detonation could be altered to match the shockwave. In effect, a nuclear detonation would have to be slowed or extended, in order for it to form such a shockwave.
When it comes to explosions, a nuclear detonation forms a unique type of shockwave. It comes across as a very short and abrupt pattern, compared to the shockwaves from literally any other type of explosion.
it was not a nuclear detonation. Did you watch the video? The rocket motor fuel cell collapsed.
@@SubBrief
At 17:00 You said that when they recorded the shockwave, they thought that it was nuclear.
But, they knew from the very beginning that it was NOT nuclear. You may have misspoken but that’s why I commented about that shockwave and how they knew that it couldn’t be nuclear.
Great report! For want of a 'nail'-- the battle is lost eh The Russian Orcs are still screwing up this world.
16:15 Wouldn’t the normal SOSUS arrays on Hawaii and Adak have heard the explosion too?
Edit: it was apparently detected by both the Air Force detectors and SOSUS
Detected from NavFac Point Sur.
Please do a k-129 recovery video soon! The whole cia coverup story is insane, crazy most people don’t know about this
I would love a sub brief on project azorian
I wouldn't say Howard Hughes was all that private, he produced several movies including scarface, he won several aviation trophies. He owned, and founded several major companies, the one I would point to now is the Hughes Aircraft Company, which among other things developed the AIM-4 Falcon the fire guided air-to-air missile and later (after the Howards death), the AIM-120 AMRAAM more modern versions of which (company was sold to GM and then Raytheon) recently used to shoot down an alleged chinese spy balloon.
They used an AIM-9X to shoot down the balloon
@@alexmelia8873 At the time reporting pegged one of them as the AIM-120 AMRAAM, now thanks to pentagon reports released not long after it was confirmed that indeed it was 4 AIM-9X that were used to shoot down he 3 objects. 8 months ago it was a lot harder to cut through the missreporting.
What is it with submarine TH-camrs and making such good unscripted content?
The correct pronunciation is Glow-mar. It’s because Howard Hughes’ company was called Glomar, short for Global Maritime.
The real reason the usn known where the k219 was is because american, sub possibly the swordfish, was tracking her, possibly even fired on k219
Not a tragedy - a tragedy would have been if the USSR had good submarines and missiles and would have launch a nuclear strike. It was also a good thing since it allowed the US to recover at least one of the Soviet missile and warheads for analysis. All the submariners that died on both sides owed their deaths to their political leaders. Thankfully a US and Soviet/Russian ships have never fired on each other. And hope they never do. Now lets see the comments back...
Some people are not sure about that, given the controversy surrounding the Scorpion.
@@craigaust3306 That is true
When the KGB tried to frame China.
You can't argue with conspiracy theorists. The more rational your argument the more they think you're part of the conspiracy
Aaron Amik the godfather of everything submarines
Dolphin
For the algowiggly.
Ping.
Thank you so much, youtube. I’m so glad they posted the azorian wiki page under this
This guy is just talking out of his ass so it’s nice to see a written version of people talking out of their ass instead
TH-cam: posting a wiki article doesn’t stop the spread of misinformation…take some of that TH-cam ad money and hire teams to sift through what is and isnt fake news lol
Thumbs up 👍🏽 subbed
👍👍👍👊
For the algo