THE BIGGEST SUBMARINE EVER MADE, COULD DESTROY 200 CITIES WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS

This article is about the largest submarine ever built, from the cold war era. Those giants were capable of destroying about 200 targets with nuclear weapons that were six times more powerful than those exploded in Hiroshima.

  PROJECT 941 THE TYPHOON SUBMARINES

The world's most largest submarines were the Russian Akula class submarines, often know as the Typhoon Submarines. The first one was launched from a secret shipyard at Severodvinsk in the White Sea in the month of October 1980 as told by NATO.

The name Typhoon was given by NATO as the same word was used by the then Soviet General Secretory Leonid Brezhnev of the Communist Party in his speech in 1974 while describing a new class of nuclear powered submarines, they were making in response to the newly developed Ohio-class submarines of U.S. Navy.

The Typhoon submarines were one of the most terrifying weapons ever created in the history of mankind. Those monster submarines were as huge in size as an American football field. During its initial development it was known as the Project 941, the builder and designer of the Typhoons are Sevmash and Rubin Operators respectively.

The Typhoon was designed in order such that it could launch its missiles while staying close to Russian territories so that an aerial support was always available for it, infact it was able to launch the missiles even when it was tied up to the dock if needed.

The Typhoon was just four feet longer than the American equivalents but had beam of 74 feet wide while the American ones have beam of only 42 feet. Such a huge beam was necessary to provide a large reserve buoyancy into her hulk so that she could easily surface even though the ice, it had also a pair of shielded propellers for protection from collision with ice.

As it was built primarily for long missions under the polar ice caps, her massive size was simply mind-blowing, it was half the size of an Nimitz class aircraft carrier and could reach upto 48000 tons, while the western equivalents could displace maximum upto 19000 tons. The thing that made it more dangerous was the fact that it was the quietest vessel ever built by the Soviets.

The giant Typhoon submarines could easily dive to depth of 400m (1300 ft) and could reach 22 knots (41.15 km/hr or 25.57 mph) on surface and 27 knots (50 km/hr or 31 mph) underwater. The Typhoons could carry 20 R-39 SLBMs, each with 10 multiple re-entry vehicle (MIRV) warheads.

In simple terms, she could shoot 200 targets such as military installations, ports and even cities in a single barrage with nuclear weapons 6 times more powerful than those which exploded in Hiroshima. She also had six 533 mm tubes that were capable of launching Type 53 torpedoes and SS-N-15 (Starfish) cruise missiles.

The most destructive weapon was the R-39 (NATO code name "Sturgeon"), huge 53 feet long and 84 tons heavy ballistic missiles with a range of 4480 nautical miles, it could strike at any point in the United States. A single R-39 could carry 10 one-hundred-kiloton warhead in which each one was independently targetable, meaning a single R-39 could destroy 10 targets. The R-39 was more than twice as heavy as the American UGM-96 Trident-I and is the heaviest SLBM to ever have been in service.

Armaments of a Typhoon submarine are as following -

1 × 9K38 Igla SAM

RPK-2 Viyuga cruise missiles

6 × 533 mm (21 in) torpedo tubes

D-19 launch system

Type 53 torpedoes

20 × RSM-52SLBMs

The Typhoon submarines had multiple pressure hulls, similar to the Japanese I-400 class submarines in world war 2. The Typhoon submarines had two long pressure hulls which were parallel to the third hull which was smaller and just above them, capable of breaking through the polar ice. It also had two other pressure hulls for torpedo and steering gear respectively, the design of the Typhoon increased its survivability in case if one pressure hull is breached as the crew members in others were safe and had less chance of flooding.

The Typhoon had many comfortable facilities for the sailors onboard including swimming pool, gym, auditorium, bigger mess and many other recreational facilities. Total of 8 Typhoons were planned to build under Project 941 of which only 6 could actually built and served for Russian Navy after collapse of the Soviet Union and the Cold War.

The Russian Navy cancelled the constructional order for the other vessel including (hull number TK-210) and also cancelled the modernization program of these giants in March 2012 as modernization of a single Typhoon class was as expensive as building two new Borei-class submarines. All the R-39 missiles have been retired and Typhoon have been successfully succeeded by the new Borei-class submarines since 2010- 2011.

Today only one submarine, the first of her class, the Dmitriy Donskoy is in active service, especially as a missile development and testing platform and is updated to carry the newly developed Russian SLBM, the RSM-56 (Bulava).

Despite being a replacement for the Typhoon submarines, the new Borei-class submarines are slightly smaller measuring 170m (560 ft), and have a smaller crew of 107 people as compared to 160 people in the Typhoons. These changes were made especially to reduce the building and maintainance cost of the Submarines.

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