Read more about Captain Marko Ramius at: Wikipedia Official Site: Paramount Pictures The Hunt for Red October is the debut novel by American author Tom Clancy, first published on October 1, 1984 by the Naval Institute Press. It depicts Soviet submarine captain Marko Ramius as he seemingly goes rogue with his country's cutting-edge ballistic missile submarine Red October, and marks the first appearance of Clancy's most popular fictional character Jack Ryan, an analyst working for the Central Intelligence Agency, as he must prove his theory that Ramius had intended to defect to the United States. The book was loosely inspired by the mutiny on the Soviet frigate Storozhevoy in 1975. The Hunt for Red October launched Clancy's successful career as a novelist, especially after then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan remarked that he had enjoyed reading the book. A namesake film adaptation was released on March 2, 1990, and several computer and video game based on the book have been developed. Since then, the book has become instrumental in bringing the book genre of techno-thriller into the mainstream. During the Cold War, Marko Ramius, a Soviet Navy submarine commander of Lithuanian descent, plans to defect to the United States with his hand-picked officers on board the ballistic missile submarine Red October, a vessel. It is equipped with a cutting-edge silent propulsion system, known as the "caterpillar drive", that makes audio detection by passive sonar extremely difficult and enables the submarine to sneak its way into American territorial waters and launch nuclear missiles with little or no warning. As the ship leaves the shipyard at Polyarny, Ramius kills Ivan Putin, his political officer, to ensure that he will not interfere with the defection. Initially, Ramius was instructed to conduct military exercises with Soviet attack submarine V. K. Konovalov, commanded by his former student Viktor Tupolev, for the purpose of testing the effectiveness of the caterpillar drive. Instead, he plots a different course for the North American coast, falsely informing the crew that they will be proceeding all the way to Cuba undetected. Before sailing, Ramius had sent a letter to Admiral Yuri Padorin, the uncle of his deceased wife, Natalia, brazenly stating his intention to defect; the Soviet Northern Fleet therefore sails out to sink Red October under the pretext of a search and rescue mission. By sheer happenstance, Red October passes near , a under the command of Bart Mancuso, which is patrolling the entrance of a route used by Soviet submarines in the Reykjanes Ridge off Iceland. Dallas′s sonar operator hears the sound of the stealth drive but does not immediately identify it as a submarine. As tensions rise between the U.S. and Soviet fleets (due to the unannounced incursion of the Soviet Northern Fleet into Atlantic waters), the crew of Dallas analyzes tapes of Red October′s acoustic signature and realizes that it is the sound of a new propulsion system. Meanwhile, CIA analyst and former Marine Jack Ryan, who was initially tasked to examine MI6's photographs of Red October, finds out that the submarine's new construction variations house its stealth drive. |
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Captain Marko Ramius