The Lockheed Sea Shadow and the Hughes Mining Barge
aviationintel.comThe Hughes Mining Barge (HMB-1) was originally developed by the CIA to salvage the Soviet submarine K-129 from the ocean floor.
It then had a second life 25 years later as the hanger for the Sea Shadow. Then they were both put in mothballs in the Suisan Bay fleet. Someone broke in and photographed it.
http://scotthaefner.com/beyond/mothball-fleet-ghost-ships/
The Sea Shadow was sold for scrap to Bay Marine for something $2.5M. But Bay Marine got to keep the HMB and that's what's on the Estuary.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2185831/Declassified...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Mining_Barge
It's too bad the _Sea Shadow_ is gone, but I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to go and see the _HMB-1_.
It's docked at Bay and Ship right next to the ferry terminal on Alameda. Here's a picture I took of it [1].
If you're in the Bay Area, it's probably not worth making the trip out there for just the ship, but it's neat to walk around the old naval base close to there, and I'd recommend a stop off at Rock Wall Wine Company along Monarch St. There's a spacious outdoor area with a very unique perspective of downtown San Francisco.
Yeah, that's the Alameda Ferry Terminal. I said Bay Marine and I should have said Bay Ship; same parent company.
Anyways, this is a Google Maps satellite photo.
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7912901,-122.2931087,173m/da...
The HMB is now used as a floating dry dock which was its original purpose.
https://web.archive.org/web/20131224162647/http://www.bay-sh...
I remember reading the Sea Shadow itself went for $400,000 and yeah, you had to break it. You pay $400,000 to ship break a 572 ton boat; at $.20/lb that isn't gonna work. I suppose that only makes sense if you get the HMB-1 for a decent price and you can use it. Apparently that was the case for Bay Ship.
The CIA has invented an entire fake scientific field to cover this: manganese nodules deep sea mining (it is actually not commercially sustainable). More than that, they have posted hundreds of peer reviewed (and completely fake) papers to convince Russians that it is a feasible idea, so they launched their own deep sea mining programs (completely abandoned after the nature of the operation leaked).
I remember reading about undersea manganese mining in an illustrated science book when I was a kid! It even had pictures of the mining craft.
To be fair, it doesn't look like this was entirely fiction. Here's what Wiki has to say on the subject [1]:
> Interest in the potential exploitation of polymetallic nodules generated a great deal of activity among prospective mining consortia in the 1960s and 1970s. Almost half a billion dollars was invested in identifying potential deposits and in research and development of technology for mining and processing nodules.
And in a few cases they actually succeeded in extracting some metals:
> In the late-seventies, two of the international joint ventures succeeded in collecting several hundred ton quantities of manganese nodules from the abyssal plains (18,000 feet, 5.5 km + depth) of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. Significant quantities of nickel (the primary target) as well as copper and cobalt were subsequently extracted from this "ore" using both pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical methods.
A lot of R&D money was sunk into this before it even had a hope of commercially viable (and it still isn't to this day), but it wasn't a hoax either.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese_nodule#Proposed_Mini...
Exactly. All part of the hoax!
> they have posted hundreds of peer reviewed (and completely fake) papers
Were the authors that were listed on these papers CIA employees with a fake cover job, or just completely made-up names?
Hah, ghost-writing peer reviewed papers for yourself on the CIA payroll? Clever.
>"they have posted hundreds of peer reviewed (and completely fake) papers"
Source?
I guess the key difference is totalitarianism. Totalitarian governments are so all-consuming, and the deceptions that sort of society uses are just profoundly different, because of the way such a deception must be approached.
With everything stemming from one big organization, the question is never if the government did it, but which government agents are the ranking officials responsible, and what are they up to?
When you have a non-totalitarian government, where officials are lesser celebrities if at all, and maybe such a government that acts as a referee for the rest of its citizens, the way it behaves gets weirder, and less predictable.
>Time is almost up for the Sea Shadow and the Hughes Mining Barge. Sadly if a miracle does not come to pass immedietly these relics of American ingenuity will be turned into rebar and Pepsi cans very soon…
Setting aside the fact it's a complete tragedy that no one has picked these two vessels up as museum pieces, I wonder how radioactive those Pepsi cans would be—considering the entire point of the operation was to raise a nuclear submarine, carrying nuclear weapons—one that supposedly broke in half according to the official story.
I'm sure contaminated areas (if any) were decontaminated, but perhaps there's still trace amounts resident in the ship that might tell an interesting story.
The barge wouldn't be radioactive, it was just used to get the recovery device into the Glomar Explorer before it set out to recover the submarine.
I had read that the Sea Shadow was actually too stealthy. Sure you're radar couldn't see it, but it also left a boat shaped hole in the ocean.
When it was sold for scrap, it went really really cheap. Like $100,000 I was tempted to put a bid on it until I learned I would be contractually obligated to destroy it.
The Sas Shadow was sold for scrap.
We were just talking about this!
(2012)
Fascinating!