I rewatched one of my favourite movies last night and this led to questions which only the dope can answer. I have read the book, so open spoilers for both.
i) Is Ramius being non Russian ever explained in the movie…I missed it if it was. Unless Sean Connery’s Scottish accent is supposed to be the give away?
ii) What exactly was the cook trying to do in the movie at the end? He shot Sam Neil and then went to set off the missile. Would it not have been better to simply set it off?
iii) Why the hell is the USN not attempting to hunt Ramius down in the beginning.
iv) What advantage does having the missile hatches forward of the sail bring…IIRC Typhoon-class is the only Boomer with this configuration.
v) Are Boomers unable to launch in certain environmental conditions? Since, in the movie it is stated that he can launch his missiles within four days? Now, it cannot be range, I think the SS-N-20 missile has a range to hit the US even from the pier at Murmansk and cannot mean preparation time, since IIRC, missiles boats can launch in minutes.
He was setting a time delayed fuse so he could escape; if he had simply set it off he would have died.
They were. Red October escaped by using the silent drive.
I don’t recall this from the book but it might refer to the weather topside - you can’t launch if the weather’s too bad - or to FOBS (?), where you get as close as possible to the target to minimise the time before impact.
It wasn’t explained in the movie. IIRC, in the book he’s Lithuanian. Personally, I didn’t find his accent distracting. Sure he’s a Russian character with a Scottish accent, but other characters were Russians with an American accent (or a fake Russian accent). I don’t see why one is more incorrect than the other.
I think he was an undercover KGB agent? So WAG but maybe his plan A was to shoot the bridge crew and gain control of the sub, but he only succeeded in killing Sam Neil. So his plan B was to set off the missile/sink the sub. I’m sure the KGB would rather that he stop the defectors without destroying the very expensive sub, if possible.
I’m pretty sure they were trying to hunt him down as soon as the found out about him. Pretty much every American ship and sub in the Atlantic was looking for him - they just couldn’t find him at first because of the caterpillar drive.
I don’t know anything about this. I think the Red October was supposed to be bigger than the rest of the Typhoon’s? Maybe due to her bigger size and having to redesign the interior to accomodate the new drive system (which was in addition to the regular system), they had to relocate the missile hatches?
My impression watching the movie was that it was due to weather (which was very rough at the time - see Ryan’s helicopter trip to the Dallas).
What I always found amusing comparing the book to the film was Skip Tyler figuring out what the caterpillar drive would sound like. In the movie, he thinks about it for a moment and says, “whales humping, or some kind of seismic anamoly”.
In the book it took him 100 pages and a Cray supercomputer to figure that out!
Remember, in the beginning of the film, the Captain is speaking in Russian and we are getting the English words on screen. Then he reads from the Bible. Halfway thru that reading, he is speaking English, to our ears. Merely an easy way to get to the language we need to hear. He is still speaking Russian. The movie makers plugged in the Universal Translator.
Ryan explains this in his briefing to the Joint Chiefs when he has his revelation that Ramius is defecting. “Ramius trained most of their Officer Corps, which would put him in a position to select men willing to help him. And he’s not Russian. He’s Lithuanian by birth, raised by his paternal grandfather, a fisherman. He has no children, no ties to leave behind. And today is the first anniversary of his wife’s death.”
The film emphasizes the disagreement over whether Ramius is trying to defect to increase the drama, while in the book it was generally accepted that this was true. The film also mentions the death of Ramius’ wife, but not that her death was due to diluted antibiotics and an incompetent doctor, nor the rest of the backstory about his grandfather, all of which contributed to Ramius’ long-standing resentment of the Soviet system.
He was going to ignite the booster, which would have destroyed the submarine. He did not have the arming keys to fire the missile via the standard process. It is possible he was installing a delay and would attempt to escape (I believe this is stated in the book) but frankly bailing out in the North Atlantic doesn’t offer much hope for rescue even with survival gear and ships in the area.
At first, they are not aware of the defection; they just know that the Red Banner Northern Fleet is mobilized and appears to be searching for something. When they do get intelligence of the RBNF directive to destroy the Red October (mentioned during the JCS briefing) they debate whether it is a pre-emptive attack by a rogue captain or a defection. Once the Soviet Ambassador relays the message that Ramius has gone rogue (false) the USN attack submarines in the Second and Sixth Fleets (including the Dallas) are directed to hunt down and destroy Red October, which again is intended in the film to create more tension between Ryan and the captain of the Dallas.
I don’t know that there is any particular advantage. I would assume this was done to best manage trim. The Type 941 ‘Typhoon’ class (internal name is ‘Akula’, which confusingly is the NATO designation for a different Russian attack submarine class) is by far the largest ballistic missile boat ever built, which displaces more than twice what a USN Ohio class Trident II submarine.
Modern boomers fire from a submerged position, and except for extreme conditions (such as those caused by seismic events) can fire in essentially any topside weather conditions. The four days isn’t the time in which the Red October could be in range, but rather when it could be off the coastal shelf and capable of striking the Eastern Seaboard within only a few minutes of launch as explained by Skip Tyler. Whereas a normal ballistic path would come from the Barents Sea or Arctic Ocean over the North Pole and across Canada (unlike US subs which run “deterrence patrols” that are several months in duration in the middle of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Soviet fleet was kept closer to home and had patrols that only lasted a few weeks), the Red October with its “stealth drive” was designed to sneak up to a coastal position and presumably fire the missiles on a depressed trajectory to minimize flight time and penetrate from a direction not usually watched by the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) or PAVE PAWS. Although the launches would (presumably) be seen by DSP satellites, they would not be easily tracked and could potentially offer a crippling first strike capability by eliminating the National Command Authority (presidential line of succession) and the Pentagon.
In the film Tyler mentions that the US Navy had worked on such a system, and I think it is implied that he was in some way involved in the effort. Note that the drive system in the movie is described as being a “magnetohydrodynamic drive…no moving parts, like a jet engine for water”, whereas I recall the drive in the book as merely being a ducted impeller which was quiet (but not silent) by virtue of maintaining laminar flow conditions and eliminating cavitation that occurred at the tips of the external props on other submarines.
BTW, I was studying Russian at the time the film came out, and our class went to see the film. We found it highly amusing that Connery was speaking comprehensible Russian (presumably phonetically) with a distinct Scottish burr, which is unlike any Eastern European accent. This would be like someone speaks French with a California Valley accent. (Sam Neill at least made a good attempt at sounding Russian, and some of the other conn crew either knew some Russian or had adequate coaching.) Frankly, if John Wayne can get away with playing Ghengis Khan, Brad Pitt a Cockney, and John Malkovich a Russian gangster (“Geeve theese mahn heese mahnee!”) I think we can give Connery a pass for playing a Lithuanian sailor.
I recall the scene in the movie when Ryan figures out that Ramius is going to defect. He says that Ramius isn’t Russian and he also says something about his wife’s death that suggests there’s no loyalty to the USSR.
I do not remember that scene. But, in the book they go into some detail about why Ramius wished to defect.
Interestingly one thing I thought the movie did right was displaying the comforts abroad Red October. In the book, the lack of amenities is a major plot point. The real Typhoon class are the closest thing to a luxury submarine there is.
Yes, in the book his wife went into the hospital for routine surgery but the Russian doctor was incompetent (and drunk!) and she died on the table. But because the surgeon was also a high ranking party member he wasn’t punished.
As far as weather goes, I can’t see that ever preventing a boomer from launching its missiles. The only time they can’t is if they’re under pack ice, in which case they’d simply have to surface and break thru the ice first, then launch.
In the book the US knows almost from the start that Ramius is defecting, not rogue. That scene in the movie where the NSA guy says that the top Soviet brass received a message from Ramius and that, "…while the contents of the message is unknown, they immediately ordered their entire fleet to find Red October, and sink her!" Great scene for a film, but in the book I think they ***did ***know the contents of the letter. Their source was ‘The Cardinal’, an extremely high-level Soviet who was spying for the US and is the subject of Clancy’s later novel The Cardinal of The Kremlin…
Umm…sorry, but I think that’s a bit backward (?)
All Soviets are Russian, but not all Russians are Soviets.
All Party patriots (i.e. Soviets) are citizens on Russian (expanded, including annexed satellite states) soil.
Not everyone on Russian soil is a Party patriot (or even agrees with the Party’s views).
Ah, pity! It’s one of the best scenes, in which we not only get an explanation to help us support our protagonist’s efforts, but we get to see our quiet little historian tell a General to basically sit down and shut up.
–G!
Jeffrey Pelt: You slammed the door on the General pretty hard, didn’t you?
Jack Ryan: That was not my intention.
Jeffrey Pelt: Oh, yes, it was! He was patronizing you, and you stomped on him! And in my opinion, he deserved it!
Depends on the definition of “Soviet”. If it means “citizen of the USSR”, which included (ethnically/linguistically) Russians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Tajiks, Turkmen… then all Russians are Soviets but not all Soviets are Russian.
There is a similar technique in Judgement at Nuremburg. Near the beginning of the movie Maximillian Schell is making his opening statement in court as the defense attorney. He is speaking in German. Suddenly the camera zooms in on his face and simultaneously he switches to English.