Famous Submarines of the Cold War Quiz

Answer: Thresher

USS Thresher (SSN-593) was conducting post-maintenance dives off of Cape Cod, MA when she was lost on April 10, 1963. Her later sister ships were first known as "593s" or "Thresher-class"; after her loss, the class was called "594s" or "Permit-class".

Answer: K-19

K-19 was the first nuclear submarine that could carry ballistic missiles. Because of the reactor incident, portrayed in the 2002 film "K-19: The Widowmaker" (and the other incidents), K-19 was known in the Soviet fleet as "Hiroshima".

Answer: Moored in Portland Harbour

A "hot run" of a torpedo was determined to be the cause of the sinking of HMS Sidon. In a "hot run", the engine starts while the torpedo is still aboard the submarine, in this case in a torpedo tube. The resultant heat and pressure ruptured the Sidon's hull, causing her to sink at the pier, killing 12 and injuring seven others.

Answer: Nautilus

Nautilus was named for the fanciful submarine in "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (an 1870 novel by Jules Verne) that was capable of prolonged submerged operations. USS Nautilus was also the first submarine to make a submerged transit of the North Pole, an area that became of strategic importance for later ballistic missile submarines and those that hunted them.

Answer: Hughes Glomar Explorer

The Golf-II Soviet ballistic missile submarine K-129 sank in the deep Pacific in March 1968. Using sophisticated sonar arrays, the U.S. Navy pinpointed the location of the sinking, and the submarine USS Halibut located the wreck. The Hughes Glomar Explorer (HGE) was ostensibly a commercial mining ship, a cover story necessary to hide her true mission from the Soviets.

The HGE reportedly recovered a portion of K-129 from a depth of 16,000 feet.

Answer: Scorpion

USS Scorpion sank in deep waters of the Atlantic near the Azores taking a crew of 99 to their deaths. A number of theories exist as to the cause of her sinking, including Soviet attack, an explosion or "hot run" of one of her own torpedoes and even malfunctioning of a trash disposal unit.

Answer: Halibut

USS Halibut (SSN-587) was a one-of-a-kind originally designed to carry and fire the Regulus cruise missile from a cavernous area built into the bow of the boat. After Regulus was taken out of service, the large space in Halibut was converted to special operations and known as the "Bat Cave" for all of the classified and special purpose equipment it contained. Tapping the Soviet cables required clamping a large electronic device onto the cable, a delicate operation that required long missions to locate the cables, then using divers to place the tap pods and recover the taped data.

Answer: Australia

HMAS Orion surreptitiously tracked a Soviet Charlie-class submarine and a Kirov-class cruiser as they visited Cam Ranh Bay in North Vietnam, greatly increasing Allied information about these vessels and earning the Australian submarine service a role in Cold War naval espionage.

The Australian submarines were smaller and more maneuverable than the larger U.S. submarines, and so better able to operate in the shallow coastal waters off of Viet Nam and other areas in the Western Pacific.

Answer: Fastest submarine

K-222's official submerged speed record is 44.7 knots, 51.4 MPH, 82.8 km/h. The unique and strong titanium hull allowed this great speed, but was incredibly expensive, effectively prohibiting the construction of any other submarines of that class.

Answer: USSR / Typhoon

The Soviet Typhoon-class ballistic missile nuclear submarines (SSBN) were 574 feet (175m) long, 76 feet (23m) wide and displaced up to 48,000 tons submerged. The second-largest submarine is the Soviet Borei-class SSBN, with stats of 574ft (175m) x 44ft (13.5m) x 24,000 tons. The third largest, the US Ohio-class SSBN, is 560 ft (170m) long, 42 ft (13m) wide and displaces 18,800 tons.