While the idea of finding a missing submarine in the Pacific Ocean, even when they had a general idea of where to search, proved so daunting to the Soviets that they’d ultimately given up looking, Bradley was fairly optimistic. He had a better way of locating it. //

Four boats were lost in 1968, including the USS Scorpion and the Soviet Union’s ballistic missile boomer K-129, which the Soviets never did locate — until the United States handed them the wreck’s location six years later.

How did the United States find it? Credit Project Azorian, a massive top-secret CIA mission to salvage the wreck. The six-year effort cost a half-billion dollars, and involved some of the U.S. Navy’s most impressive tools, many of them still classified. It was arguably the single most impressive feat of naval engineering in history.​

The hunt for the Soviet sub is the subject of journalist Josh Dean’s gripping new book, The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History.