On March 8, 1968, after a patrol in the North Pacific, K129 failed to send the protocol message it expected. Something was wrong and the USSR began a frantic search involving 36 ships and dozens of aircraft. After two months, the country gave up the search for him.
The Americans were concerned about Moscow’s interest in a submarine and began their own search. They were successful: the K129 was near Hawaii, 5,000 meters deep, and was able to give the CIA a feast. The agency teamed up with eccentric tycoon Howard Hughes to finance an expedition that recovered the ship six years later. It is not known for certain whether the CIA received torpedoes and valuable documents from the Soviet Union.
Less than three months after the sinking of the K129, an American nuclear submarine named Scorpion disappeared with its 99member crew. He was in the Atlantic, returning from a mission in the Mediterranean, observing Soviet activity near the Canary Islands.
The scorpion gave no further signs and great efforts were made on both sides of the ocean to locate it. But dozens of ships and other submarines couldn’t find it quickly. It wasn’t until the end of October that the wreckage of the Scorpion surfaced at a depth of 3,000 meters near the Azores.
The four shipwrecks in such a short time, in the middle of the Cold War, are a mystery with the atmosphere of a “007” script. They directly affect the superpowers of the 20th century and key American allies. Time passed, the causes were not discovered (or at least not revealed) and the accidents were forgotten over time.