Covert American mission to salvage a sunken
Soviet submarine in the mid 1970's.
Howard Hughes lent his services to assist the government, providing huge, canopied
ship that was hollowed out to acommodate sections of the retrieved sub without being
obvious to
satellite observers.
The retrieval team noticed that the sub in question was poorly constructed and, in the case of some key components, dangerously obsolete.
The embarrassment this constituted for the Russian navy may go far towards explaining their subsequent reluctance to ask for aid in later crises.