Glomar Explorer (Soviet submarine recovery)

Howard Hughes's cover for the CIA Glomar Explorer — a multibillion-dollar disguised freighter that lifted a Soviet submarine off the Pacific floor — invoked as the most dramatic example of US deep-sea retrieval capability built up in the same period as the Alvin work.

If you ever read about Howard Hughes and the Glomar Explorer — the CIA built a full-size ship that was sort of a plant. It just kind of went out to that part of the Pacific, and it had all this high technology stuff, and it lifted a Soviet submarine off the floor. It was a spy ship, and it was supposed to look like a freighter. There are books written about the Glomar Explorer. It was a multibillion-dollar CIA project to get Soviet warheads. We got our warhead back from off the coast of Spain, but it was a big problem.