CIA ‘mystery barge’ resurrected

During the 1970s, the huge Hughes’ Mining Barge, with HMB-1 emblazoned on the side, was home ported in Redwood City where it was easily seen by motorists, many of them assuming the letters had something to do with Half Moon Bay. The mining angle was a ruse to cover its true role as part of a clandestine operation designed to recover a Soviet submarine and its code books from the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

“It’s fantastic,” said Bay & Yacht spokesman David Ashton. “It’s the only covered dry dock on the West Coast and we can work rain or shine. The dry dock is regularly employed.”

Although it never left California coastal waters, the barge was a main component in the 1974 operation the CIA hoped would bring the Russian submarine up more than 16,000 feet from the ocean about 1,000 miles from Hawaii. Reports speculated that the operation was at least partly successful. Underline “speculated.” There was a lot of that sort of thing going on when it came to finding out just what happened. Several accounts erroneously reported that the barge was submerged at the recovery site.

After the CIA caper, the barge returned to Redwood City where it became the womb for the Navy’s “Sea Shadow” stealth ship, which was built inside the barge. The 164-foot long Sea Shadow, the inspiration for the bad guy’s lair in the James Bond movie “Tomorrow Never Dies,” was put on the market along with the barge but found no takers and was scrapped. The twin-hulled vessel, which resembled an A-frame houseboat, eventually became so “unsecret” that there is now a plastic model kit of the Sea Shadow, which had a speed of 10 knots and slanted sides engineers hoped would ward off radar probes.

The Sea Shadow was the barge’s second child, so to speak. A giant claw, a key part of the submarine operation, was constructed inside the barge while it sat in Redwood City waters. The claw was placed aboard a mother ship called the Glomar Explorer which then brought it to the recovery site where it was lowered to the ocean depths.

Ray Feldman of Palo Alto was the engineer responsible for the digital data link that provided commands to the claw during the entire operation. He was able to clear up some things for me.

“The barge never left California coastal waters and was not used to hold the recovered portion of the sub,” he said. The barge was not sea worthy enough for the open ocean and did not have propulsion, but it was submersible, a capability needed to get the claw aboard the mother ship.

Contrary to some reports, no cryptographic machines were recovered, Feldman said. According to Feldman, the 100-foot center section of the submarine was lost during the recovery operation in which the claw was damaged.

The damaged claw was transferred back to HMB-1 off Santa Catalina and returned to Redwood City to be refitted for a second attempt, which never took place. Some blamed press leaks for the second effort never being attempted. But, of course, that is mere speculation.

The Rear View Mirror by history columnist Jim Clifford appears in the Daily Journal every other Monday.