Today, only one Typhoon remains active while two others have been placed in reserve. Among the many sent to the wreckers were three of the six Typhoons, with the other three staying in service.
In the 1990s, the US and Canadian governments began offering financial incentives to Russia, after the fall of the Soviet Union, to retire a number of their nuclear deterrent warships. The Russian government simply couldn't afford to keep fielding the largest missile submarines they (or any other country in the world) had ever built. Of the seven planned Typhoons, six were built throughout the 1980s and retired less than 10 years later in the 1990s. Televisions (a luxury in the Soviet Navy) were also set up throughout the boat, playing Soviet movies, television shows and propaganda for the crew's entertainment.īut just as these behemoth war machines entered service with the Soviet Navy, their time rapidly began to wind down. You didn't misread that - Typhoons were actually built with small two-foot-deep swimming pools to improve crew morale on long deployments, along with saunas and a lounge area with plush rocking chairs. Unlike any other submarine ever built, each Typhoon also came with a unique and somewhat enviable feature - a lounge for sailors, including a swimming pool and a sauna.
Instead of utilitarian steel furniture with minimal padding, a Typhoon's interior features wooden-paneled walls, comfortable padded chairs, raised ceilings and full-sized doorways, and a fully-stocked gym. Instead of constantly traversing the world's oceans, Typhoons were built to sit under the Arctic Circle for months at a time, waiting to punch through the ice in order to launch their deadly payloads of nuclear-tipped missiles.īecause of their designated operating locations, these subs could often escape harassment by American and British hunter/killer submarines constantly prowling around the Atlantic Ocean looking for Soviet warships to mess with.īecause of the length and duration of their missions, Typhoons were designed with crew comfort in mind. In fact, the accommodations aboard a Typhoon were so luxurious that sailors in the Soviet (and later, Russian) navy nicknamed these gargantuan vessels "floating Hiltons." Two nuclear reactors give these warships the power they need to operate, allowing for a maximum speed of around 27 knots underwater (31 mph). Typhoons carry their missiles in front of their gigantic (and almost comically oversized) sail instead of behind it, as Delta-class and American Ohio-class boats do. Should a breach occur - whether by collision or attack - the crew inside the other pressure hulls would be safe and the sub would still be operational. Inside the Typhoon's hulking mass existed a pair of longer pressure hulls from older Delta-class ballistic missile submarines and three more smaller hulls placed around the boat to protect other critical points like engineering spaces and the torpedo rooms.
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