A crane with Cold War CIA origins will help the Baltimore bridge cleanup

RETROPOLIS
A crane with Cold War CIA origins will help the Baltimore bridge cleanup

By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff and Praveena Somasundaram
Updated March 31, 2024 at 1:34 p.m. EDT | Published March 31, 2024 at 1:30 p.m. EDT



The Chesapeake 1000 crane at Tradepoint Atlantic in Sparrows Point, Md., on Friday. (Brian Witte/AP)

The story of the massive crane tasked with clearing the wreckage of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge began with a secret operation in the midst of the Cold War, a billionaire’s cover story and a missing Soviet submarine.

Decades ago, the Chesapeake 1000 crane, which arrived in Baltimore on Friday, was a key part of a Central Intelligence Agency project that aimed to recover Soviet secrets in a period fraught with political tension between the United States and the U.S.S.R.

In 1968, a Soviet sub carrying nuclear-armed ballistic missiles and at least six crew members went off the grid near Hawaii, according to the CIA. The United States found it 1,800 miles northwest of the state, and officials thought it might carry valuable intelligence. But how does one lift a 1,750-ton submarine from 16,500 feet below the surface?

The CIA took the lead and developed an operation that was code-named Project Azorian, ordering the construction of a huge mechanical claw to latch on to the sub and a ship-mounted hydraulic system to lift it. … That’s when the Sun 800, now known as the Chesapeake 1000, was conceived, “to build the ship at the heart of the CIA’s operation,” said Gene Schorsch, who ran the shipyard in the 1970s.

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Amber Ferguson and Andrew Jeong contributed to this report.

By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff
Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff is a reporter on The Washington Post's General Assignment desk, where he covers breaking news and writes of-the-moment features. He has reported for The Post from Europe and covered crime and criminal justice on the Metro desk. He previously worked for the Texas Tribune and was a Fulbright scholar in Germany. Twitter https://twitter.com/danrosziff

By Praveena Somasundaram
Praveena Somasundaram is a reporter on The Washington Post's Morning Mix desk. She joined The Post as an intern on the General Assignment desk and has previously reported at the Dallas Morning News and the Charlotte Observer. Twitter https://twitter.com/praveenavsoma