The Chesapeake 1000, once known as the Sun 800, is a massive crane built in Chester that was once part of a secret 1974 CIA salvage of a sunken Soviet sub.

Now the renamed crane is proving its worth once again as part of the cleanup operations at the site of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore, writes Sarah Kuta for Smithsonian Magazine.

The Chesapeake 1000 will be used to lift pieces of the bridge that fell onto the cargo ship.

It was part of a much different mission back in 1974.

A CIA multi-year operation called Project Azorian was designed to recover K-129, a Soviet submarine that sunk in the Pacific Ocean in 1968.  

A ship with a powerful hydraulic system was built at the Sun shipyards in Chester, along with the Sun 800 crane. A cover story reported that billionaire Howard Hughes was building a deep-sea mining vessel, the Glomar Explorer.

A giant claw built elsewhere was supposed to latch on to the sub, but when the ship and the claw arrived together in 1974 at the salvage site, the sub broke apart.

A third of it was recovered, along with the bodies of six Soviet submariners.

Read more about this crane’s unique history in Smithsonian Magazine.