The Hunt for Red October
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- This is about the 1984 novel. For the film see The Hunt for Red October (film)
 Recent US paperback edition cover |
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| Author | Tom Clancy |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Ryanverse |
| Genre(s) | Novel, Techno-thriller |
| Publisher | Naval Institute Press |
| Released | 1984 (1st edition) |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 387 p. (hardback edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-87021-285-0 (hardback edition) |
| Preceded by | Red Rabbit |
| Followed by | The Cardinal of the Kremlin |
The Hunt for Red October is Tom Clancy's first novel, published in 1984. The story follows the intertwined adventures of Soviet submarine captain Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius, and CIA analyst Jack (John Patrick) Ryan.
The novel is sometimes referred to as the first real example of the techno-thriller, a hybrid between the spy thriller and science fiction, in which attention to technical and operational detail about military and intelligence activities is paramount. Research for the Hunt for Red October was conducted using the Harpoon board game developed by Larry Bond[citation needed].
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[edit] Plot introduction
The Hunt for Red October was inspired by two real incidents. In 1961, Soviet Navy submarine captain Jonas Pleškys, a Lithuanian, sailed his vessel from Klaipėda to Gotland in Sweden, not the planned destination of Tallinn. The Soviet authorities sentenced him in his absence to death by firing squad, but the CIA hid him, first in Guatemala and later in the United States. On November 8, 1975, the Soviet Navy frigate Storozhevoy mutinied. At the time, the Western powers believed it was an attempt to defect from Latvia to the Swedish island of Gotland. The mutiny was led by the ship's Political Officer, Captain Valery Sablin. The mutiny was unsuccessful, and Sablin was captured, court-martialed and executed. The novel was originally published by the U.S. Naval Institute Press—the first fictional work they ever published, and still their most successful.
[edit] Plot summary
Marko Ramius, a half-Lithuanian by birth, who has risen to high levels of trust in the Soviet Navy and whose father was a respected Politburo member, intends to defect to the United States with his officers and the experimental nuclear submarine Red October. The Red October is equipped with a revolutionary stealth propulsion system (in the movie, a magnetohydrodynamic drive) nicknamed the caterpillar drive. In the novel, the propulsion system is described as a hydrojet system, making detection difficult for sonar operators on board opposing submarines. The result of the ultimate strategic weapon platform being able to stealth its way into American home waters is immediately apparent to Ryan and the admirals in the JCS that he briefs.
It is also not lost upon Ramius, whose defection is spurred by several other factors as well. In particular he is darkly affected by the death of his wife due to a doctor's incompetence. Because the doctor was the son of a Politburo member, he was above reproach. This, in conjunction with a long-standing dissatisfaction with the callousness of the Soviet establishment towards its sailors and the fear of the destabilizing effect of the Red October in world affairs, ultimately exhausts Ramius' tolerance for the Soviet system's failings.
In the beginning of the novel, Ramius kills Political Officer Ivan Putin to ensure he will not hamper the defection. In a letter to Admiral Yuri Padorin (his uncle), Ramius states that he is going to sail into New York Harbor. This has the same effect as Hernan Cortes burning his ships in the new world, and the entire Soviet Red Banner Northern Fleet (with the specific exception of missile submarines, to avoid confusion) is deployed to sink the Red October. This places the Soviet Northern Fleet, under the cover story of a search and rescue mission, well within 400 km (about 250 miles) of the American coast, an excellent place to start a war of aggression against the US if the Russian government's explanations cannot be trusted. The final fearful possibility is that the Soviets have a madman on their hands, who is intent on firing his missiles at the US as soon as he can get within range.
Jack Ryan, a naval historian turned CIA analyst, deduces Ramius' plans. The U.S. high command agrees warily, while also planning for contingencies in case the Soviet Fleet has other intentions than their stated cover. As tensions rise between the U.S. and Soviet fleets, and the crew of a U.S. attack submarine stumble across the secret to detecting the Red October, Ryan must contact the Red October's rebellious captain to prevent the loss of a decisive technological advantage. Through a combination of circumstances, Ryan becomes responsible for seeing the sub, and Ramius, to safety from the pursuing Soviet naval fleet. The US, in order to make the Soviets believe that the Red October has been destroyed, rescues the crew of the submarine, after Captian Ramius declares a shipboard emergency; he and the officers heroically stay aboard to scuttle the submarine. Shortly thereafter, a decomissioned US ballistic missile submarine, the Ethan Allen, is blown up underwater. These two events fool the Russians into thinking that the Red October has been lost. However, a GRU agent masquerading as a ship's cook attempts to destroy the October from within by firing a missile engine, hoping to incinerate the ship. During the confrontation with the agent, an officer under Ramius is killed, while Ramius and a British officer who boarded the vessel with Ryan are wounded. The agent is eventually killed by Ryan after a gun duel in the sub's missile space.
Meanwhile Captain Tupolev, the captain of a Soviet attack-submarine, and a former student of Ramius, while trailing what he thinks to be an Ohio-class submarine, realizes that it is indeed the October, and pursues it. The two US submarines escorting the Red October are unable to fire due to rules of engagement, and as a result the October is torpedoed but survives. After a tension-filled standoff, leading to the Red October sinking the Soviet Alfa class submarine by ramming it broadside, the Americans guide Red October safely into the eight-ten dry dock in Norfolk, VA.
The final piece of the deception of the Russians involves the recovery of a pressure meter on the deep ocean floor by a US Navy deep exploration/salvage sub through sleight-of-manipulator, in the presence of a Russian military attache. This proves the wreck of the Ethan Allen is the Red October, as far as the Soviets are concerned. Now they only have to find the attack sub that disappeared at the same time...
[edit] Characters in "The Hunt for Red October"
Many of the characters in the novel appear throughout Clancy's subsequent works, particularly Jack Ryan, who is the central character of many of Clancy's novels.
[edit] Film Adaptation
The novel was made into a commercially-successful movie in 1990, starring:
- Sean Connery as Marko Ramius,
- Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan, and featuring:
- James Earl Jones as Admiral James Greer
- Scott Glenn
- Sam Neill
- Fred Dalton Thompson
The novel also served as the basis for a computer and board game.
[edit] Trivia
- President Ronald Reagan helped to fuel the success of The Hunt for Red October and Tom Clancy's writing career when he announced that he enjoyed the book at a televised press conference, calling it "unputdown-able". [1]
- Some of the technical details were prescient. For example, the Ada programming language is used to implement a computational fluid dynamics model on a Cray-2 supercomputer. Cray Ada Version 1.0 actually became available in 1988. [2]
- The name "Marko Ramius" does not sound typically Lithuanian. Most Lithuanian male first names end in "-as", and so "Markas" would be more likely. However, this is not a name commonly encountered in Lithuania either. This is probably because his father is noted to be a Russian and has named his son likewise
- The fictional Alfa-class submarine, V. K. Konovalov, that is featured prominently in the novel was named for Vladimir Konovalov.
- The Soviet Typhoon-class submarine, on which the Red October is based, contains three pressure hulls, carries 20 ballistic missiles, and is 175 meters (574.1 feet) in length. This is a mere 5 meters (16.4 feet) longer than the American Ohio-class submarine, but has twice the amount of displacement.
- The book is seen on the bookshelf of Light Yagami from Death Note.
- In the book, said submarine travels up the Chesapeake Bay and near Tom Clancy's Calvert County home on the water. This was not the case in the movie.
[edit] See also
- Crazy Ivan
- Strozhevoi mutiny
- The Hunt for Red October (video game)
- The Hunt for Red October (film)
- Soviet submarine Red October
[edit] External links
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