![]() ![]() Later the Royal Navy would follow suite with the Vanguard class replacing the Polaris armed Resolution class. With the United States making the announcement in the 1970’s of the trident program, the Soviets knew that a new class of submarine would undoubtedly follow, this would ultimately culminate in the very impressive Ohio class submarines. The typhoon is also able to carry the Korund as well as SS-N-15 & 16 anti-submarine missiles. The typhoon was typically armed with several types of torpedoes namely the 53-65K, SET-65 SAET-60M, USET-80 and the VA-111 Skhval. NOTE: Specifications are from publicly available sources.īesides the 20 nuclear missiles the submarine had six 533mm torpedo tubes with a further 22 reloading shots in the torpedo compartment. To give you a comparison of the missiles this table was created using open-source information exact figures remain classified both east and west.Ĭomparison of missiles of the Soviet Typhoon class and the USN & RN Navies The missile itself was to be large, far larger than anything currently in submarines in the west. The missile was to be fired using the D-19 missile firing complex which allows the missile to be fired Surfaced or Submerged. The missile was to be known by its GRAU index 3M65 (later 3M20 & 3R65) but to NATO this was to be known as the SS-N-20 Sturgeon. The design work on the Missile began in 1971 by Design station SKB 385 Mashinostroyeniya known as Makayev rocket design bureau. The design brief went out to both missile design stations and submarine design bureaus, the result was a missile much larger than anything in the Soviet arsenal at the time and a missile that was larger than trident. RSM-52 NATO SS-N-20 missile being loaded onboard TK208 late 1990’s The Weapons The incoming Delta I & II class fared much better (Delta III and IV are more improved) but still could not counter the new trident missile in terms of warheads and range thus a new solution and missile was needed. With the announcement of the incoming trident program in the United States the Soviets began radically rethinking their current strategy, the older boats, those of the Project 667A Yankee and Project 658 Hotel class submarines were simply not up to the job countering this new system. This submarine would also be a colossus of a machine dwarfing anything past or present and even today they remain the largest submarines ever built. In nearly every design of a ballistic missile submarine its main battery has usually been found aft of the sail housed neatly under a raised casing, this new submarine changed all that, this time these boats would have their main battery forward of the sail. The sub has spent its post-Cold War career as a test bed for a new generation of Russian submarine technologies and missiles, and was instrumental in testing the buggy Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile.Designed in the 1970’s along side the more numerous Project 667B BD BDR BDRM NATO Delta I II III IV boats, the Project 941 Akula NATO codenamed Typhoon was a radical departure from anything that we have seen before or since. Russia built five Typhoons in total, but today, only Donskoy remains in service. The first submarine in the Typhoon class, Dmitri Donskoy (TK-208), entered service in 1981. Petersburg’s Rubin Design Bureau to squeeze in such unprecedented perks as a solarium, swimming pool, and sauna. Although most subs are relatively spartan in amenities, the sheer size of the Typhoons made it possible for engineers at St. The Typhoon-class submarines displaced 23,200 tons in order to accommodate a payload of 20 RSM-52 ballistic missiles. The subs (code name: Akula) were designed to be 566 feet long, 76 feet wide, and nearly 38 feet tall. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union embarked upon a new nuclear weapons program (code name: Typhoon) to develop a new missile-firing submarine and nuclear missiles. Just how big are we talking? Each u-boat stretched to nearly 600 feet long and was wider than the average American house-and almost three times as tall, to boot. These Cold War giants still stand as the largest subs ever built. If you’ve ever seen The Hunt for Red October, you’re probably familiar with Russia’s truly massive Typhoon-class submarines. The missile-firing submarines were designed to operate in the Arctic under pack ice.Ī typical Typhoon was more than 1.5 times longer than a football field and three times as tall as the average American house. Russia’s Typhoon-class submarines were true Cold War leviathans. ![]() Photo credit: Georges DeKeerle - Getty Images ![]()
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