The CIA, the Cold War, Howard Hughes, and the Triple Ring Bearing
Michel (Mitch) Bouchard
Secretary/Treasurer at General Bearing Service Inc.,
This has got to be one of my favorite bearing-innovation related stories to date. I remember a few years ago my dad and I came across this story in a magazine (maybe National Geographic) and saw this picture of a humongous triple ring bearing, embedded in a great Cold War covert op story:
(photo credit https://www.maritime.org/doc/glomarexplorer/index.htm)
The article had a caption that said it was the biggest bearing of it's kind ever manufactured. As a bearing geek, I know that's no ordinary bearing! Here's a hand-drawn sketch of this particular application from 1975
(photo credit https://www.maritime.org/doc/glomarexplorer/index.htm)
Today we see these bearings on deflection compensating rolls in paper mills (this particular design was favoured by Kusters of Germany). This bearing, however, was designed for and served as the gimbal bearing on the Glomar, a ship built by Howard Hughes at the request of the CIA to undertake the top-secret recovery of Soviet Submarine K-129 which sank to the bottom of the sea in 1968.
For those of you who are interested in the story, you can scour Youtube or read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian and https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-museum/experience-the-collection/text-version/stories/project-azorian.html
When my dad and I first read the article, we speculated on who might have manufactured this incredible bearing. Surely we could track down someone within our network who knew something about this, right? ... And so began an awkward series of conversations with high ranking bearing gurus and technical bearing geeks the world over (no offense to anyone but I'm sure you know who you are). It probably didn't help that we both couldn't really remember the details of the article, and that all the people involved in Project Azorian were presumably sworn to secrecy (or worse). Above all that, 1968 is almost 50 years ago. Eventually we gave up.
Until now. Through this great thing called the internet, I tripped over the entire story as I was searching for information on triple ring bearings. I even managed to easily track down the patent originally filed in 1971 by SKF (https://www.google.com/patents/US3796472). I don't know for sure, but I would think that is some indication of who the manufacturer was.
Amazing how things seems to come around full circle in the bearing business. Mystery solved dad.
Great post, most days bearings are boring and not sexy...however, this story is cool and reminds me of "The Hunt for Red October" and would make sense given the time period. I can't imagine what this custom one of a kind bearing application would have cost the average tax payer "unofficially" by the CIA :)
Gerente Técnico y asociado de CJC Supply Services, C.A.
10 年Very interesting
Business Management, Change, Digital, BtoB, Stakeholder
10 年Many thanks Mitch for this very interesting article. Back 20 years ago, already !# , use to repair those triple ring paper mill kuster dryer roll at Torrington Darlington uk(since Timken). A must in the bearing repair. Few of those to apply in the paper mills of the "Landes" nice south west France region. What a nice time !! Just for reminding this, many thanks again...
Retired at Ingersoll Rand
10 年The triple ring bearing that is featured in the article by Mitch, is most interesting. I had thought that I knew of most things that were happening in the bearing industry at that time, but this is the first that I have seen or heard on this project. Ray Porter