The Hunt for Red October

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 a CIA analyst named Jack 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.

Plot introduction

The Hunt for Red October was inspired by a real incident. On November 8, 1975, the Soviet Navy frigate Storozhevoy mutinied, which at the time the West believed 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; Sablin was captured, court-martialed and executed. The novel was originally published by the U.S. Naval Institute Press—the first work of fiction they ever published, and still the most successful.

Plot summary

Ramius, a Lithuanian by birth, who has risen to high levels of trust in the Soviet Navy, 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 called a caterpillar drive), making it extremely difficult to detect with regular methods. Ramius' defection is spurred by several factors, in particular the death of his wife due to a doctor's incompetence. Because the doctor was the son of a Politburo member, he was beyond reproach. This, in conjunction with a long-standing disatisfaction with Communism and the callousness of the Soviet establishment towards its sailors, ultimately ends 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, Ramius states that he is going to sail into New York Harbor. As a result, the entire Soviet Navy (with the specific exception of missile submarines, to avoid confusion) is deployed to sink the Red October. This places the Soviet Navy, under the cover story of a search and rescue mission, well within 400 km of the American coast.

Ryan, an expert on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, deduces Ramius' plans. The U.S. high command meanwhile come up with contingency plans in case the Soviet Fleet has other intentions. As tensions rise between the U.S. and Soviet fleets, and the crew of a U.S. attack submarine stumble on 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. After a clever diversionary tactic, the Americans find a way to help the Red October safely reach the coast of Maine.

Characters in "The Hunt for Red October"

Many of the characters in the novel appear throughout Clancy's subsequent works, particularly Ryan, who is the central character of many of Clancy's novels.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

The novel was made into a commercially successful movie in 1990, starring Sean Connery as Ramius and Alec Baldwin as Ryan, and featuring James Earl Jones, Scott Glenn, Sam Neill, Richard Jordan, Joss Ackland, Peter Firth, Jeffrey Jones, Fred Dalton Thompson, Courtney B. Vance, Tim Curry, and Stellan Skarsgård. See The Hunt for Red October (film).

The novel also served as the basis for a computer game, as well as a board game.

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". ^*
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. ^*
In the movie, the "revolutionary" magnetohydrodynamic drive that acts as the main driver of the plot was fictional. However, both superpowers actually did experiment with MHD propulsion, though neither could get it to work well enough for use on board of a ship. In the book, Red October uses a tunnel drive that operates like a jet engine.
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.
The fictional Alfa class submarine V. K. Konovalov, that features 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 & is 574 ft in length (fourteen ft longer than an American Ohio-class sub).

External links

1984 novels

Submarine fiction | Submarine simulations | Techno-thriller novels | Tom Clancy | Films directed by John McTiernan

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