Tom Clancy’s iconic novel about ‘his’ Russian ‘Red October’ Ginormous Typhoon class missile sub was his best novel….
The Russian Navy has now formally decommissioned the nuclear ballistic missile submarine Dmitry Donskoy, according to state media. For years now, the submarine has been the sole remaining example of the iconic Typhoon class to be in service. The Typhoon remains the largest submarine of any kind, by displacement, to have ever been built.
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The six completed Typhoons, including Dmitry Donskoy, had largely uneventful careers during the Cold War. In 1991, Arkhangelsk, then known only by its hull number TK-17, nearly sunk after suffering a harrowing accident during a planned test launch of an unarmed R-39. The missile exploded in the launch tube, but the boat’s Captain at the time, Igor Grishkov, and its crew were ultimately able to keep it afloat, as you can read more about here.
The Typhoon class did still become one of the Soviet Navy’s most iconic vessels. It’s place in the public consciousness was further helped by Tom Clancy’s now-famous 1984 novel The Hunt For Red October and the 1990 film adaptation of the same name starring Alec Baldwin and Sean Connery. The story centers on a heavily modified fictional subvariant of this submarine, the eponymous Red October….