Giant Russian Typhoon Class subs

[Equus]

aeropilot said:

From my days in a pukka old fashioned drawing office long before 2D CAD let alone 3D, it was in many ways an easier job than it is today, as people were trained, knew how to micro manage the many teams and it was largely a case of many hands make light work.....

People bang about CAD today, but the problem is now that too many people nowadays that are 'managing' the jobs have no hands on experience of how it all works, and have the press-a-button mentality that the computer is intelligent rather than the person using it as a tool, plus now one man is probably doing that 10 would have done in the drawing board days......
For all the positives of CAD, there are also negatives.

I'd agree with that, totally. CAD has led to massive dumbing-down of the people doing the design work. Most now can't interpret a drawing unless it's photo-realistically rendered for them in 3D, and rely on the software to do the calculations for them (stress or whatever), so have no 'feel' for whether the results are right, wrong or indifferent.

[dvs_dave]

Brother D said:

Junior Bianno said:

texaxile said:

Also, excuse the slightly daft question from a non military person, but were these Typhoon class (and others) very easy to detect by our tech at the time?.

Not when they engaged the caterpillar drive...

I'll bite. Was/is that a real thing?

Yes, they are a real thing. Magnetohydrodynamic drives (MHD drive) to give them their proper name. Wether or not they have ever been used in a military sub is another matter, but it's unlikely.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynami...

They typically instead use a pump jet propulsor which can if necessary operate very quietly at certain specifically tuned speeds.

[uncinqsix]

dvs_dave said:

Magnetohydrodynamic.

https://xkcd.com/1851/

I spent my whole life never hearing that word, and then I see it in two completely unrelated places in the space of a week

[Krikkit]

uncinqsix said:

dvs_dave said:

Magnetohydrodynamic.

https://xkcd.com/1851/

I spent my whole life never hearing that word, and then I see it in two completely unrelated places in the space of a week

Funny isn't it!

[Junior Bianno]

Brother D said:

I'll bite. Was/is that a real thing?

from wikipedia

"The film adaptation of The Hunt for Red October popularized the magnetohydrodynamic drive as a "caterpillar drive" for submarines, an undetectable "silent drive" intended to achieve stealth in submarine warfare. In reality, the current traveling through the water would create gases and noise, and the magnetic fields would induce a detectable magnetic signature."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynami...

Very disappointing

[Zoon]

Brother D said:

I'll bite. Was/is that a real thing?

No made up for a book.

In other news all UK subs now use Dell monitors and computers.

[andy_s]

Very cool article, full of new stuff for me. I sort of saw the end of the Cold War and so to see these things in detail is very interesting - a few things struck me; the USSR had a fleet of over 700 subs, the USSR could detect US subs from space, the titanium Alfa subs that had to be kept heated due to the Lead cooling, the sheer scale of the Typhoon, the speed of implementation from concept to operations and the vast sums of money spent that helped contribute to their ultimate demise. Fascinating.

[Wobbegong]

Ginetta G15 Girl said:

texaxile said:

Also, excuse the slightly daft question from a non military person, but were these Typhoon class (and others) very easy to detect by our tech at the time?.

Relatively easy yes.

The difficult boats were the Alfa/Akula/Sierra class attack subs and the Oscar SSGN.

I was going to query whether the Akula is the Typhoon. After further reading it seems there is a muddle with the Akula name!

What the Soviets named 'Akula' was named 'Typhoon' by the West

What the Soviets named 'Shchuka' was named 'Akula' by the West

Doesn't really add much to the topic but found it interesting

[Ginetta G15 Girl]

Confusing I know.

Especially when you consider that, apart from the Typhhon and the Akula, all other Soviet / Russian boats were refered to by phonetic letter eg:

Delta III - SSBN

Charlie II - SSGN

Victor III - SSN

Kilo - SSK

[Vitorio]

Wobbegong said:

I was going to query whether the Akula is the Typhoon. After further reading it seems there is a muddle with the Akula name!

What the Soviets named 'Akula' was named 'Typhoon' by the West

What the Soviets named 'Shchuka' was named 'Akula' by the West

Doesn't really add much to the topic but found it interesting

And to add to the confusion, i think at some point in the past the alpha class (much older boats) were referred to as akulas as well (or maybe i conflated those when internet/wiki wasnt as ubiquitous as it is these day)

Amazing stuff!

[Phud]

Akula is shark in Russian.

The alpha had to be kept running or the reactor melted through the hull.

No they were not as easy as some believe to track and follow, the top boats were very quiet and good drill, the normal fleet boats had high noise levels.

[RalphyM]

Quite interesting set of photos of a decommissioned typhoon submarine.

http://ru-submarine.livejournal.com/17486.html

[Krikkit]

I wonder if you could bribe your way into a tour... What a fabulous machine.

[Europa1]

RalphyM said:

Quite interesting set of photos of a decommissioned typhoon submarine.

http://ru-submarine.livejournal.com/17486.html

Jesus H Candlesticks! Those photos really bring home how massive they were!

One of the photos is at the stern and behind and to either side of the rudder you can see what look like the top of 2 hoops above the water - are they some sort of shroud for the propellers?

[andy_s]

Europa1 said:

Jesus H Candlesticks! Those photos really bring home how massive they were!

One of the photos is at the stern and behind and to either side of the rudder you can see what look like the top of 2 hoops above the water - are they some sort of shroud for the propellers?

Have a look at the OP

[RalphyM]

apols, didn't realise the same pics were in the original link.

[Kuroblack350]

Ginetta G15 Girl said:

texaxile said:

Also, excuse the slightly daft question from a non military person, but were these Typhoon class (and others) very easy to detect by our tech at the time?.

Relatively easy yes.

The difficult boats were the Alfa/Akula/Sierra class attack subs and the Oscar SSGN.

In the early days of the Soviet Union, their boats were incredibly noisy, making them easily detectable and just about useless in a game where silence is golden. During the late 70's and early 80's a number of spy scandals in the US contributed significantly to the Soviets realising their boats could be heard clanking their way through the GIUK gap from hundreds of miles away... That's one of the reasons why you see some significant improvements starting with the Victor III boats (first to display a towed sonar array IIRC) through the Sierra and Alfa class.

[dukeboy749r]

If what you said was true, there'd be ships, planes, subs, failing left right and even off centre.

[jkh112]

Max_Torque said:

Have we got any naval architects on PH?

Yes.

Ballast tanks are external to the pressure hull. They can be opened and closed via remote valves to allow air to escape and so allow water to enter, or for compressed air to be forced in to displace the water.

Trim and buoyancy tanks are used to make more active adjustments to the buoyancy and trim of the boat.

Once the ballast tanks are full the tanks cannot self fill with depth as they are already full.

A very simplified answer but I hope it answers your question.

[anonymous-user]

Excellent, thanks!

So the large ballast tanks can be non structural because they don't have to withstand diving depth pressure differences?

Then the sub relies on small trim tanks, that i guess must be structural?