Soviet submarine Red October
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 A Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine. The fictional submarine Red October would have looked similar in most respects to the sub pictured here. |
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| Career (USSR) |  |
|---|---|
| Laid down: | |
| Launched: | |
| Commissioned: | December 3, 1984 (after retrofitting of caterpillar drive) |
| Decommissioned: | Approx 18 months after the events of the novel. |
| Status: | Destroyed by United States Navy after being stripped of its technology. |
| Homeport: | Nerpichya, Zapadnaya Litsa |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 32,000 tonnes submerged |
| Length: | 198 m |
| Beam: | 26 m |
| Draft: | 12 m* |
| Propulsion: | 2 pressurized-water nuclear reactors Backup diesel engines 2 brass propellers Magnetohydrodynamic drive (movie) Hydrojet drive (book) |
| Speed: | Surfaced: 12 knots* Submerged: 27 knots (about 50 km/h)* (About half this using the new drive system) |
| Range: | Effectivly unlimited as long as the reactor core holds out. |
| Endurance: | Many months, though Soviet doctrine required missile Subs to be docked most of the time. |
| Test depth: | 400 m* |
| Complement: | 163 men/officers* |
| Armament: | 4 630 mm torpedo tubes 2 533 mm torpedo tubes |
| Aircraft carried: | None |
Red October (Russian: Красный Октябрь, "Krasniy Oktyabr" ) is a fictitious Typhoon class submarine in the Tom Clancy novel The Hunt for Red October and the movie which followed. She was built with a revolutionary stealth propulsion system called a "caterpillar drive", which is described as a hydrojet system in the book. In the movie however, it is shown as being a magnetohydrodynamic drive. Captain First Rank Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius was the last commanding officer of Red October.
In Late 1984 Ramius and his command crew took the Red October out on exercises. Once at sea Ramius murdered the political officer and then turned the ship towards the United States. Despite efforts by the Soviet Navy, Red October was able to reach USS Dallas and the United States was able to engage in a complicated rescue plan. Along for the ride on the Dallas, and later on the Red October, is a part-time CIA analyst named John Ryan, who read Ramius' intent and suggested setting up the rendezvous. The rescue plan resulted in the Russian Navy believing the ship had been destroyed. Though her survival was discovered by a soviet attack submarine the October was able to destroy it before her continued existence became known.
Most of the officers defected, and Ramius but the commander of the Dallas concealed the defection from the rest of the crew, who were repatriated in due course. The sub was gutted by the U.S. Navy to discern its secrets. Sometime between a year and eighteen months later the remains of the ship were sunk in a deep ocean trench.
The Red October adventure proved useful later in Ryan's career by providing the lever with which to force a threatening KGB Secretary to defect to the US against his will, ending the possibility of a Kremlin coup against a politically centrist Soviet government.
Years later the truth of these events came to light when political opponents of then President John Ryan, revealed his part in the affair. By this time the Soviet Union had collapsed and the prevailing opinion in Moscow seems to have been "Well Done", though they put the Soviet hierarchy in a political bind vis-a-vis cooperation with the United States at a critical point.
In the story, Red October is the seventh Typhoon class hull built for the Soviet Navy; the real seventh boat, hull number TK-210, was laid down in the late 1980s, canceled before it could have been commissioned and scrapped in 1990. None of the real Typhoon class submarines were officially named Red October.
