Читать книгу Under Pressure. Living Life and Avoiding Death on a Nuclear Submarine онлайн

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Resolution was 425 feet long by 33 feet wide and pulled a draught (distance from waterline to keel) of an inch over 30 feet. Her displacement when surfaced was 7,700 tonnes, and while diving 8,500 tonnes. The speed of the boat was roughly 20 knots surfaced and 25 knots submerged. The tear-shaped hull of a submarine is designed to be more aerodynamic when it is surrounded by water on all sides, hence it is faster underwater. The optimum depth to which the submarine can dive is over 750 feet.

As for her armaments: six Mk 24 Tigerfish torpedoes with a maximum range of 39 kilometres, travelling at a speed of around 35–40 knots, and 16 Polaris A-3 ballistic missiles with two Chevaline warheads per missile, with a staggering nuclear yield of about 225 kilotonnes. To put that into perspective, ‘Little Boy’, the Hiroshima bomb, yielded around 13–18 kilotonnes, while ‘Fat Man’, the Nagasaki bomb, weighed in at 20–22 kilotonnes. A deeply sobering thought when I considered what I was sleeping next to.