Soviet submarine designers had a penchant for extremes. This can be seen in the obsession with the 'largest' (Typhoon), 'fastest' (Alpha) and 'deepest' (Mike). The problem is that they tended to push the envelope further than what the technolgy of the day allowed. This meant that most of their designs were problematic, to say the least. In the case of the Typhoon, it was the enormous amount of maintenance required between patrols that made the boats too expensive to operate regularly. So the Typhoon really became a cool, if impractical submarine design.
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