‘The Lun-class (harrier) ekranoplan was a seaplane used by the Soviet and Russian navies from 1987 to sometime in the late 1990s.
‘The 240-foot long Lun-class vessels were designed to skim just over the surface of the sea at up to 340-miles per-hour while carrying six, P-270 Moskit guided missiles meant to take out NATO ships.’
‘The only Lun completed is now sitting unused at a naval station in the town of Kaspiysk.’
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Images 3-28 by Igor
Thank you to Defense Tech and Travel Centre
This capsule was curated by Roy Guill
Did a search on Google Maps – found the beast at http://g.co/maps/5b7de
two MASSIVE hovercraft – 42m long… photos at http://panoramio.com/photo/24884850
This vehicle should be restored to use by….Hubertus Bigend, perhaps?
How cool would this be to see it fly!
Gotta love Soviet aircraft design -when in doubt, bolt on more engines to the side.
cuddly ^^
if i had the money i’d buy that, transport it to some middle-european country and make a hotel out of it. imagine that planted on a scottish moor or Brandenburger Heide. unfortunately i don’t have money, nor i know anyone who has. :/
“Calling International Rescue”
Perfect hight quality photography. Hope i’ll see it one day alive.
looks as if it were built from poured concrete. And those instruments? 1987 or 1947? Good heavens.
Typical soviet engineering. This rig never went over 40 knots.
God almighty, did the Soviets EVER produce anything smaller than a football field?
I believe the CIA nicknamed this thing “The Caspian Sea Monster”
Yeah, I think they did call it “The Caspian Sea Monster”.
I saw a documentary about this ~10 years ago on Swedish television. Apparently, the states saw this from an aerial photo but thought it was just a huge plane still being built since its wings were so short. Later though, they got newer pics and it still looked the same. They didn’t get what it was, it being so huge but with wings seemingly clipped.
The plane uses an aerodynamic effect called the ground effect which greatly reduces the energy required to keep a plane flying, as long as it stays close to the ground. You can see birds use this while flying across lakes. The eight motors had to be used in full effect to lift the plane up from the water and the motors could be tilted upwards a bit to get some extra lift. Once in flight, only two motors were needed.
The plane had a huge range and would have been able to transport troops across the Atlantic in just a few hours, which of course posed a pretty decent threat in the Cold War times. They interviewed one of the test pilots in the documentary and by his account they never really pushed the plane anywhere near its limits, in terms of speed or range.