#34: Typhoon-class: The Largest Submarines Ever Built
At 48,000 tons submerged and 574 feet long, the Soviet Typhoon-class submarines remain the largest submarines ever constructed, so enormous that each boat contained a swimming pool, a sauna, and a small gym for her crew of 160. These underwater leviathans were built to survive beneath the Arctic ice cap and unleash 20 nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles in a retaliatory apocalypse.
Six Typhoons were built between 1976 and 1989, each carrying 20 R-39 missiles with a range of over 5,000 miles and up to 10 independently targetable warheads per missile. A single Typhoon could theoretically destroy 200 separate targets. Their double-hulled construction, with 19 watertight compartments, gave them extraordinary survivability. The Typhoon-class inspired Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October" and became the most recognized symbol of Cold War submarine naval warfare. Only one, TK-208 Dmitriy Donskoy, remains in Russian service as a test platform.
