Typhoon scrapes ice instead of punching through

[Capt Jack Harkness]

I was hunting a Typhoon in the polar region and when he tried to surface to evade a torpedo he instead hit the ice above him and scraped. It's really not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things but isn't most everything on a Typhoon designed around the idea of punching through polar ice to fire its missiles?

[The Bandit]

Originally Posted by Capt Jack Harkness

I was hunting a Typhoon in the polar region and when he tried to surface to evade a torpedo he instead hit the ice above him and scraped. It's really not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things but isn't most everything on a Typhoon designed around the idea of punching through polar ice to fire its missiles?

It is but like everything else its got to have its limits as far as thickness goes. I'm pretty sure they'd classify that information anyways but I think they could / were only supposed to punch through at fissures / polynyas and had to either launch from the surface or launch after surfacing to break up the ice before diving again.

I can't remember where I read it but, along these lines there was the idea that if launch was imminent that P-3s would start dropping lulus down any polynyas they could locate.

I'm pretty sure by the late period of the Cold War, the Typhoon's M.O. was to get under the ice cap and go into a hover somewhere and wait. As loud as the ice was they had a fairly decent chance of picking up anybody who would be looking for them, and if it came down to it they'd unleash a pretty devastating counter-value strike.