A new Netflix series will include an episode looking at a secret mission that involved a Chester shipbuilding company and the recovery of a sunken Soviet submarine. An episode of a new series, ‘Spy Ops’, tells the story of Project Azorian, writes Kristin Hunt for PhillyVoice.

The CIA operation was designed to recover K-129, a Soviet submarine that sunk in the Pacific Ocean in 1968. The U.S. located the sunken sub 1,800 miles northwest of Hawaii and created an elaborate scheme to salvage it.

The 1970 plan was to build a giant claw in a Chester shipyard owned by Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock.

The cover story was that eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes was building a deep-sea mining vessel there.

The Hughes Glomar Explorer was officially christened in 1972 along the Delaware River. It sailed to Bermuda for testing, then to Long Beach, California in preparation for its real mission.

It made it to the wreck site on July 4, 1974, but the K-129 sub broke apart when the claw tried to raise it, with part of it falling back into the sea.

Six Soviet sailors found on board by CIA operatives were given a military burial at sea.

Read more about Chester’s role in a secret CIA mission to recover a sunken Soviet submarine from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in an upcoming Netflix episode on the Glomar Explorer in PhillyVoice.