The Instrumentation Center

Manganese

About the Display:  

• What do Howard Hughes (former world's richest man), the CIA and a 350 million dollar drillship platform have in common?

U.S. Government - U.S. Government Photo 

Answer: Manganese.

During the cold war in 1968, the Soviet nuclear submarine K-129 sunk ca. 1,600 mile NW of Hawaii.  The CIA developed an elaborate secret plan with cover-up story to recover the submarine, a 6-year mission began. Howard Hughes agreed with the CIA to direct the construction of the Hughes Glomar Explorer, which was built in 1971/1972, a deep-sea drillship platform with a secret mission. The ship was designed with a giant claw extending to the deep ocean floor and able to grab and pull the Russian submarine into its belly.  The costs were $350 million, about $2.7 billion in 2023. Officially, the 600 ft. ship was a "mining vessel" built to extract Manganese nodules from the ocean floor. The Hughes Glomar Explorer was christened in 1972 and began its operation in 1974.

According to declassified CIA documents, most of the submarine broke off and sunk again including the important code room and the nuclear missiles. However, two nuclear-tipped torpedoes were recovered as well as the bodies of six crew members who were given a military burial-at-sea. The burial was filmed by the CIA and given to Russia 20 years later. 

Not all CIA documents about this submarine heist have been declassified.

• Garden clippers: Manganese can be found in some steels, it forms an alloy that decreases the brittleness of steel and gives it strength.
• a vial with 30-gram of manganese 

About the Contributor:

Paula Ashley is the former Marketing Manager for enrollment teams at the University of Toledo. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in graphic design from BGSU and completed  a degree in religious studies at UToledo in 2022.

Paula enjoys a variety of creative endeavors, including painting, cooking, knitting, journaling and creatively filling the Manganese box in the Periodic Table.

 

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