Typhoon Class Submarine: The Largest Submarine Ever Built
Submarines are the backbone of any naval force because it plays a pivotal role in case of a war. There are many submarines that have been manufactured and employed in naval forces. Today we are going through Typhoon-Class Submarine. Let see we what makes it different. This one is all about the typhoon-class submarine. As per my knowledge this the biggest submarine ever built, it's an insane project. I think it has a swimming pool inside stuff like that anyway we're going to jump into it so let's get started.
In the frigid depths below the Arctic Circle a monster glides effortlessly through the dark water and objects larger than anything ever seen below the waves I mean how big a whale is compared to a submarine. Six times longer that a blue whale and armed to the teeth with the kind of weaponry that leads to only one thing nuclear war. What first appeared in the 1970s almost gone now but it still retains its hallowed status as the largest submarine ever put to sea and by some distance the Soviets named it the Akula class meaning shark. But we know it better by the name given to it by NATO - The Typhoon Class Submarine. We feel like NATO should have just translated it directly from shark. The shark submarine would have been you know cooler what rolled him out of the Saburo to Venus shipyard in 1979 was quite simply a different level.
Inside View of Typhoon : Illustation
The typhoon class submarine had been designed as a direct challenge to the Ohio-class of the United States. This was at the height of the Cold War with both sides frantically attempting to match each other in every possible way. The amounts of innovation that came out of the Cold War in terms of like ways to kill each other, but also cool technology related to ways to kill each other pretty extraordinary. The typhoon-class submarine came to public prominence in the West Dilys. Thanks to the 1984 book at 1990 film The Hunt for Red October in which a brooding Soviet captain played wonderfully by Sean Connery goes rogue and that is a fantastic movie. If you haven't seen it recommended and people often make fun of me for having seen no classic movies. I have seen The Hunt for Red October it's great is he defecting or does he have a sights set on the destruction of the American East Coast. I'm not going to give you any more details. It's worth a watch not only as an excellent film but as an insight into what life must have been like on board a typhoon-class submarine while the Soviets had of course kept much of the mechanical systems well under wraps.
Russian Navy Fleet
They also wanted the world to know it existed this is all part of the psychological warfare of it now on parade. October introduced the wider public to these fearsome monsters for the so let's take a look at the submarine itself first of all it was enormous at 175 meters 574 feet it is only slightly longer than its American counterpart while the width or beam as nautical folk like to refer to it is 23 metres 75 feet compared to just 13 metres 42 feet on the Ohio-class. You might not think that 10 meters makes much of a difference that it really does it can sometimes be difficult to compare the submarine simply by looking at their length or their beams so we often focus on water displacement. This is the amount of water that the submarine effectively replaces when it is submerged imagine you know putting it in a big really big swimming pool all the water that flows over the side is essentially the size of your submarine and this is where the typhoon glass stands head and shoulders above anything else at a colossal 48,000 tons.
It has a displacement of two and a half times the Ohio-class 10 meters difference two and a half times the water displacement. It was huge so why did the Soviet Union need such a vast Leviathan of a submarine I'm going guess here that it was to show up well there are two main reasons we're going to go into the weapons carried on board in more detail shortly but let me start by saying that the missiles carried were significantly bigger than those of the Americans. Their power was roughly the same but the American engineering was ahead at least in how compact they could make a nuclear bomb. The typhoon-class submarine needed to be enormous in order to accommodate the enormous bombs on board simple math really the second reason was far less practical and certainly more ego driven this may have been secondary to the capacity needed but no doubt Soviet leaders rather enjoy the fact that this submarine was bigger than anything ever created the Cold War game of cat-and-mouse.
It does have a lot of intriguing aspects to it but simple prestige played a huge role anyone familiar with the space race will know that today only one typhoon-class submarine The Dmitri Donskoy remains in active duty. This was also the very first to be built and currently operates as a test platform for the more modern of missiles to further typhoons. The arc angle and the sever star have been held in reserve for the last 15 years.
Let’s jump back to the start the Soviet Union had fallen slightly behind in terms of submarines in the Cold War. The introduction of the Ohio-class submarine in the late 70s at a reported cost of two billion dollars adjusted for inflation was a significant turning point for nuclear submarines. This was not a submarine designed to wage battle beneath the waves rather this was a ballistic missile submarine capable of single-handedly wiping nations off the face of the earth. They were a fearsome rival and didn't Soviets know it at the time the Soviets ride heavily on the Delta class submarines though they would have been the envy of almost every nation around the world. The Soviets knew that they had to keep up with the Americans records from the Soviet Union are always sketchy at best but when it came to the production of weaponry it remains a closely guarded secret.
Aircraft Carrier
We believe it was 1979 when the first typhoon-class submarine left the shipyard to begin live testing and it was officially commissioned in 1981 much of what the Typhoon's did with their time will simply never know because it's classified and just remains that way anyway perhaps luckily for everybody. The 1980s saw the beginning of the end of the Cold War – the days of Cuban Missile Crisis when the world apparently teetered on the edge of nuclear war were thankfully long gone while both the Soviets and the Americans still needed to strut their stuff and flex their mighty muscles every now and again change was in the air in 1986 at the Reykjavik summit. United States President Ronald Reagan and his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev began a series of steps that would limit the number of nuclear weapons held in both countries of the 31st of July 1991. They signed the start 1 treaty limiting both countries to only 6,000 nuclear warheads atop a maximum of 1,600 intercontinental missiles.
Now let's be really clear here that's still enough missiles to destroy the world many times over but you know I guess it was the symbolism that counted and you know one less nuclear missile is still a good thing just under five months. Later on to some 25th 1991 you probably know what happens the Soviet Union was officially dissolved so what did this mean for these dreadnaughts of the Seas well at first really missile as a new Russia step forward it needed to retain its impressive submarines but it quickly became apparent that the need for such submarines was actually coming to an end while slightly odd facts about the arms reductions treaties was that when the first typhoon was withdrawn from duty in 1991 and scrapped shortly thereafter. It was done so with the financial aid of the United States yet Russia's old foe was now effectively paying to help remove its most terrifying weaponry. I guess you know kind of money well spent there isn't it the shark or typhoon was a submarine that could remain submerged for a hundred and twenty days and even longer when absolutely necessary just nuclear submarines are seriously cool right but despite its girth life was still cramped within this metal shell.
Part - II will be published on Friday.
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