The Hunt for Red October

For other uses, see The Hunt for Red October (disambiguation).

The Hunt for Red October
1st edition
Author(s)	Tom Clancy
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Jack Ryan universe
Genre(s)	Novel, Techno-thriller
Publisher	Naval Institute Press
Publication date	1984 (1st edition)
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	387 p. (hardback edition) & 469 p. (paperback edition)
ISBN	ISBN 0-87021-285-0 (hardback edition) & ISBN 0-425-12027-9 (paperback edition)
OCLC Number	11044981
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 19
LC Classification	PS3553.L245 H8 1984
Followed by	Patriot Games

The Hunt for Red October is a 1984 novel by Tom Clancy. The story follows the intertwined adventures of Soviet submarine captain Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius and CIA analyst Jack Ryan.

The novel was originally published by the U.S. Naval Institute Press — the first fictional work they ever published, and still their most successful.

The book is inspired by the failed mutiny on board the Storozhevoy by Valery Sablin in 1975; however, the military response depicted in the novel is likely from events surrounding the sinking and subsequent salvaging of K-129.

Plot

Marko Alexandrovich Ramius, a Lithuanian who has risen to high levels of trust in the Soviet Navy, intends to defect to the United States with his officers and the experimental nuclear submarine Red October, a Typhoon-class submarine equipped with a revolutionary stealth propulsion system. The propulsion system, described in the novel as an arrangement of pumpjets, is nicknamed the "Caterpillar Drive", and makes sonar detection extremely difficult. The result, immediately apparent to Jack Ryan and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a strategic weapon platform that is capable of sneaking its way into American home waters and launching nuclear missiles with little or no warning.

The implications of Red October are not lost upon Ramius, either. In addition, several other factors spurred his decision to defect. In particular he is deeply disillusioned by the death of his wife, Natalia, at the hands of an incompetent doctor who, because he was the son of a Politburo member, is not punished. Her untimely death, combined with Ramius' long-standing dissatisfaction with the callousness of the Soviet establishment towards its people and his fear of the destabilizing effect the Red October will have on world affairs, ultimately exhausts his tolerance for the failings of the Soviet system.

In the beginning of the novel, Ramius kills Political Officer Ivan Putin to ensure that he will not interfere with the defection. In a letter to Admiral Yuri Padorin (who was Natalia's uncle, and to whom Marko refers as "Uncle Yuri"), Ramius brazenly states that he is going to defect to the United States, and that he is not joking. Similar to Hernán Cortés' burning of his ships upon arrival in the New World, the letter destroys the possibility of return and leaves no option for his fellow conspirators but to press on or die.

The entire Soviet Northern Fleet (except for missile submarines, to avoid confusion) is deployed to sink the Red October. The Soviets conduct this operation on the pretext of a search-and-rescue mission, even though it is within 400 km (about 250 miles) of the American coast, claiming that the massive effort is because some of the missing personnel are close relatives of political VIPs.

An additional component to the storyline is the uncovering and turning of the Soviet agent codenamed Cassius, a senior aide to a senator in Washington by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and using him to feed false information about the Americans' knowledge and response to the situation. This later becomes a very important element in the next chronological book, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, in persuading a top official to defect to America.

Meanwhile, Jack Ryan, a former U.S. Marine and naval historian turned high-level CIA analyst, flies from London to Langley, Virginia to deliver British Intelligence's photographs of Red October to Deputy Director of Intelligence, and contacts a friend at the U.S. Naval Academy to find out that the new construction variations house the "Caterpillar" drive system. When the silent drive is engaged, the submarine disappears off the sonar of the USS Dallas, a Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine, which was tracking Red October since she put to sea. Learning this and the subsequent launch of the entire Northern Fleet, Ryan deduces Ramius' plans. The U.S. high command agrees warily, while also planning for contingencies in case the Soviet Fleet has intentions other than those stated. As tensions rise between the U.S. and Soviet fleets, the crew of the Dallas discover a way to detect Red October. Ryan must contact the Red October's rebellious captain to prevent the loss of the submarine and its decisive technology. Through a combination of circumstances, Ryan becomes responsible for shepherding the submarine — and Ramius — to safety from the pursuing Soviet fleet.

The United States, in order to make the Soviets believe that the Red October has been destroyed, rescues its crew after Ramius fakes a shipboard emergency; he and the officers heroically stay aboard, claiming they are about to scuttle the submarine. Instead, a decommissioned U.S. ballistic missile submarine, the USS Ethan Allen, is blown up underwater. A depth gauge taken from the main instrument panel of the Red October (with the appropriate serial number) is made to appear as if it was salvaged from the wreckage.

Although these events succeed in convincing Soviet observers that the Red October has been lost, a GRU agent masquerading as a ship's cook realizes what is actually happening. He attempts to destroy the Red October by igniting a missile rocket motor inside a launch tube and incinerating the boat. The agent kills one of Ramius's top officers, and wounds Ramius and a British officer who boarded the vessel with Ryan. Ryan attempts to persuade the agent to surrender rather than die in the explosion, but the deeply patriotic man refuses. It is only moments before the agent would have succeeded that Ryan manages to fatally shoot the agent in the submarine's missile compartment. Just in case he got enough wires connected, Ramius orders the missile jettisoned, adding to the American smokescreen.

Meanwhile Captain Viktor Tupolev, a Soviet Alfa-class attack submarine commander and former student of Ramius, has been trailing what he at first believes is an Ohio-class submarine. He and his political officer come to realize that it is the Red October, and proceed to pursue and engage it. The two U.S. submarines escorting the Red October are unable to fire due to rules of engagement, and the Red October is struck by a torpedo but survives. After a tense standoff, Red October rams Tupolev's submarine broadside and sinks it, and the Americans escort Red October safely into the eight-ten dry dock in Norfolk, Virginia. Ramius and his officers are taken by to a CIA safehouse to begin their Americanization, while Ryan is commended by his superiors and flies back to his British post.

Influence on later Clancy books

The Hunt for Red October was the start of a loosely connected series by Tom Clancy which shared a rough continuity. Many of the characters in the novel, particularly Jack Ryan, went on to be the central character of many of Clancy's later novels. The ultimate fate of the Red October is explained in the Clancy novel The Cardinal of the Kremlin, where it is revealed that the vessel was reverse engineered and stripped of all technology. The Red October was then sunk in a deep ocean trench off Puerto Rico to avoid discovery. Both Ryan and Ramius are on hand to see the submarine off for the last time, and Ramius sentimentally comments, "He was a good ship."

Adaptations

Film

Main article: The Hunt for Red October (film)

The novel was made into a commercially-successful movie in 1990, starring:

• Sean Connery as Marko Ramius
• Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan
• James Earl Jones as Adm. James Greer
• Scott Glenn as Cpt. Bart Mancuso
• Sam Neill as Captain 2nd Rank Vasily Borodin
• Jeffery Jones as Skip Tyler
• Fred Thompson as Rear Adm. Joshua Painter

There were several differences between the novel and the film, including the Red October traveling up the Chesapeake Bay and near Tom Clancy's Calvert County waterfront home, and the prominence of the Royal Navy, including HMS Invincible. The order of many events also has been changed. In the film version, the "Caterpillar Drive" is described as a magnetohydrodynamic system, essentially, "a jet engine for the water".

Games

Main article: The Hunt for Red October (video game)

The novel also served as the basis for several computer and video games, as well as some board games.

In the card game Killer Bunnies, a limited edition card was made called "Red October".

The Hunt for Red October wargame, published in 1988 by TSR, Inc. became one of the bestselling wargames of all time.^[1]

On June 2, 2009, the MMORPG RuneScape released a quest titled "The Hunt For Red Raktuber", which is loosely based on this story.

"Red November" by Fantasy Flight Games (2008) is a board game loosely based on The Hunt for Red October. The theme of the game is that a gnomish submarine (with very heavy Russian influence in style) is falling apart and the crew must repair the problems until rescue arrives.

Reception

The Hunt for Red October sold very well and launched Clancy's successful career as a novelist. President Ronald Reagan helped to fuel the success of The Hunt for Red October when he announced that he enjoyed the book at a televised press conference, calling it "unputdown-able" and a "perfect yarn."^[2][3]

Publication history

The hardback edition of The Hunt for Red October is the first and only novel published by the Naval Institute Press. Clancy had published a few articles in Proceedings of the Naval Institute, so it occurred to him to send the manuscript there. The press accepted the manuscript and sent a small advance. After the book received unexpectedly good reviews and praise from President Reagan, the book became a bestseller. Clancy's later books were published by Penguin Putnam.

The paperback edition was the first in a string of successful publications of technothrillers by Berkley Books.^[4]

See also

Novels portal

• Valery Sablin
• Crazy Ivan
• Red October (submarine)
• Soviet frigate Storozhevoy
• United States Naval Institute v. Charter Communications, Inc.

References

1. ^ "The History of TSR". Wizards of the Coast. Archived from the original on 2008-10-04. http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wizards.com%2Fdnd%2FDnDArchives_History.asp&date=2008-10-04. Retrieved 2005-08-20. 
2. ^ [1]
3. ^ New York Times
4. ^ McDowell, Edwin (May 13, 1988). "Book notes". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/13/books/book-notes-590988.html. Retrieved February 18, 2011. 

External links

• Mansionbooks.com, photos of the first edition of The Hunt for Red October

Lithuanian edition: "Raudonojo spalio medžioklė", published by Vaga Publishers Ltd. in 2003, translated by Romualdas Grigaliunas (1)