Description
In the 1984 Tom Clancy Cold War thriller The Hunt for Red October and its 1990 film adaptation, Soviet captain Marko Ramius takes command of the titular Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine and sets sail across the North Atlantic. But while officially ordered to patrol the American coast, Ramius has a secret agenda: he intends to defect to the United States. The moment they deduce his intentions, both the Soviet and U.S. Navies scramble their fleets, each racing to intercept the Red October first. The hunt is on. Both book and movie have been widely praised for their accuracy and meticulous attention to detail, with Tom Clancy even being secretly investigated by the FBI and U.S. Navy to find out where he got his information! And indeed, the Typhoon Class submarine is very much real. The largest submarines ever built, between 1982 and 2024, six of these monsters silently patrolled the world’s oceans, each carrying a nuclear payload equivalent to nearly 3,000 Hiroshima bombs. This is the story of one of the largest and most terrifying naval weapons ever devised, and whether the caterpillar drive depicted in the story is real or merely creative license by a very talented author.
Author: Gilles Messier
Editor/Host: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Caden Nielsen
0:00 Intro
1:13 Developing the Ultimate Cold War Weapon
6:44 Designing the Incredible Typhoon Class Submarine and What It Could Do
14:50 Deploying the Monstrous Typhoons
18:39 The End of One of the Most Incredible Submarines Ever Built