Having run out of phonetic alphabet names to call new Soviet submarines, NATO opted for the TYPHOON Class SSBN (capital letters denote a NATO codename) because that's what the Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev called it. How much western intelligence officials knew in private is unclear, but in the public sphere there was a lot of speculation about the new boats which entered service at the height of the Cold War. Russia made no secret of the new type's existence and relative importance, but of course almost every detail of the new boat was closely guarded. Since entering service in the early 1980s the boats have been surrounded by secrecy. This Covert Shores Recognition Guide Covers over 80 classes of submarines including all types currently in service with World Navies. Get The essential guide to World Submarines Consequently these boats still hold a certain mystique and wonder which no other boat can match. It's much wider and taller than the Ohio and displaces 48,000 tons which is comparable to the battleship Bismark not other submarines. The Typhoon is simply so enormous that no other submarine is comparable. This is true but it is no way to measure the relative sizes of these two massive submarines. It is often pointed out that the US Ohio Class SSBNs, themselves large and impressive boats, are even longer than the Typhoon. This meant that the new submarine would have to be very large and strong, in fact by far the largest submarine ever built. Firing the missiles without first breaking through the ice was obviously suicidal so the new submarine had to be built strong enough to surface through ice at a moment's notice without having to find a weak point first. Even nuclear submarines had to find weak points in the ice in order to surface. If they hid under the ice however they were relatively safe.īut operating under the ice presented the very obvious problem of how to fire the missiles through it. In open water the Soviet SSBNs could be followed by US and British hunter-killer submarines (SSNs) whose job it was to sink them before they'd loosed off any of their missiles. Nuclear submarines had been operating under the ice since the 1950s and it was found very difficult to track other submarines using Sonar or satellites in these conditions. The TYPHOON Class ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) was designed in the 1970s both as a counterbalance to the US Navy's impressive Trident missile program and as a way of making the Soviet SSBNs more survivable by hiding them under the Arctic ice-cap. It was an instrument that could only play one tune. The center aisle of the cathedral was dominated by a colossal 20-tube organ which reached all the way up to the arching steel roof over sixteen meters above. In the event of being ordered to deliver the Devil's sermon, their congregation (probably the last people alive on the planet until they ran out of food and died like everybody else) would be protected in the two strong pressure chambers which enveloped the pews on either side. His enemies called these monumental structures TYPHOONs. These giant structures of steel and titanium would lurk in impenetrable Arctic bastions from where they could bring total destruction to the world. And so Brezhnev built underwater cathedrals to the demon-gods of Nuclear Armageddon. Paranoid and distraught, he sought a way to regain a mad equilibrium. One was called the Soviet Union and was led by a man named Leonid Brezhnev who learned through his spies that his submarines were not as good as his enemy's. But mankind was made up of two opposing factions who sought advantage over each other. For a time these sea monsters roamed the world's oceans ensuring an uneasy peace. Not content to rain death and destruction from the skies with his bombers, mankind invented I.C.B.Ms which could be hidden beneath the waves in giant submarines. Updated, originally posted 14th Sept 2014
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