For Sale - Slightly used HMB-1

Parked with the mothball fleet in Suisun Bay near San Francisco lies a "barge" with a history - and it is for sale.... (in the Row G image)

In the 1970's the Soviets lost a nuclear submarine (K-129) which went to the bottom for unknown reasons - in a part of the ocean that was thought to be too deep for recovery.

But if the U.S. could somehow fish it up, it would provide valuable intelligence about the cold war enemy.

The CIA ran an operation to recover the sunken submarine. The recovery effort centered on Hughes Glomar Explorer, a 63,000 ton deep-sea salvage vessel built for the project. The ship was built under the "cover story" that she was a deep-sea mining ship, intended to recover "manganese nodules" from the ocean floor. The ship was supposedly being built for the Summa Corporation at the direction of Howard Hughes for use by his Global Marine Development Inc. At the same time the "Hughes Mining Barge" was built. The barge, commonly known as HMB-1, was a submersible barge intended to carry the "claw" to be used in the recovery effort; it would also be used to hide the recovered submarine.

Years later the barge was involved in another secret operation - this time it was used as a covered floating dry-dock inside of which a "stealth" ship could be built away from prying eyes. It could be towed out to sea and the stealth ship "Sea Shadow" could be floated out for testing and then returned to its hiding place.

The Barge is now on the surplus list. Anybody want to buy it?