What do a top-secret CIA mission and the Maryland bridge wreck have in common? Well, the same crane

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A floating crane that’s been hauling away shattered steel from a collapsed Baltimore bridge played a much different role during the Cold War. In the early 1970s, it helped to build a specialized ship that would raise a portion of a sunken Soviet submarine.

FILE - The Chesapeake 1000 crane, which will be used to help remove wreckage from the collapse of the Key Bridge, is docked at Tradepoint Atlantic in Sparrows Point, Md., March 29, 2024. The floating crane that’s been hauling away shattered steel from the collapsed Baltimore bridge played a much different role during the Cold War. FILE - The Hughes Glomar Explorer, a 618-foot-long salvage ship built by Howard Hughes, sits at the Long Beach harbor dock in Los Angeles, March 19, 1975.

To save time, a Philadelphia-area shipyard built the vessel’s heavy parts on the ground. The floating crane was needed to lift those assembled pieces into the new ship.Workers had little warning as Maryland bridge collapsed, raising concerns over safety and communication“The Sun 800 was built specifically to help us on the construction of the Hughes Glomar Explorer,” said Gene Schorsch, who was then chief of hull design for Sun Shipbuilding and Drydock Co.

“To discover it, that’s one thing,” Bennett said. “But to have the wherewithal to try to devise a way to recover that piece of hardware is really remarkable. It’s been compared — and rightly so — to an underwater moonshot.” Another piece of machinery assembled for the ship was a special platform. It was used to keep the claw system steady — and on target — in the ocean currents.During the mission, the claw grasped the submarine section. But about a third of the way up it broke, allowing part of the sub’s hull to fall away.

Anderson’s sources told him Project Azorian was too expensive and sapped resources from other intelligence programs, Bennett said.“Anderson’s sources — and Anderson — argued that it was really a museum piece, a relic,” Bennett said.

 

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