If you’ve ever seen The Hunt for Red October, you’re probably familiar with Russia’s truly massive Typhoon-class submarines. These Cold War giants still stand as the largest subs ever built.
Just how big are we talking? Each u-boat stretched to nearly 600 feet long and was wider than the average American house—and almost three times as tall, to boot.
In the 1970s, the Soviet Union embarked upon a new nuclear weapons program (code name: Typhoon) to develop a new missile-firing submarine and nuclear missiles. The subs (code name: Akula) were designed to be 566 feet long, 76 feet wide, and nearly 38 feet tall.