Project Azorian - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• In 1977, a thriller Fireplay by author William Wingate was published. Clearly inspired by the press reports, Wingate's story has the CIA successfully raise the entire submarine only to discover that it is an empty shell, part of an elaborate plot to discredit the CIA.

• The 1978 thriller Ice by James Follett, sees the Soviet navy mobilizing powerful naval forces to cover a planned attempt to salvage a Delta II class submarine that has sunk in the South Atlantic. The justification for this effort is the CIA's successful salvage of a Soviet submarine in 1974.

• In the 1983 novel The Unripe Gold by Geoffrey Jenkins, the Glomar Explorer is used to recover four large iridium boulders from the ocean near the mouth of the Orange River after she "...had successfully plucked a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine from the abyssal depths of the Pacific...".

• Project Azorian also provided inspiration for The Jennifer Morgue, a 2006 science fiction espionage novel by Charles Stross. In Stross' story, Project Jennifer fails due to intervention by the Deep Ones.

• The West Wing season 3 episode "Gone Quiet" featured a reference to "Project Jennifer" by Assistant Secretary of State 'Albie' Duncan (Hal Holbrook), amid a plot centered around an American submarine in North Korean waters.

• The 1989 film The Abyss featured a similar mission to recover missiles and data from a downed nuclear submarine. The topside recovery ship is also called "Explorer".