Some really cool photos of the Ekranoplan

http://igor113.livejournal.com/51213.html

This thing was a beast! It looks scary just sitting there.

its like star trek on water

The rediculous size of soviet aircraft never ceases to amaze me....the thing would fly near close to the ground ! its funny looking at all the guns on the thing aswell

Yeah it used ground effect to stay in the air. Skimmed just above the surface of the water.

not to mention the 6 nuclear capable tubes on its back ;)

What in the f........i have never seen anything so beautiful! I love that plane!

It reminds me of the part in the movie 2012 where the guy says.. "That plane is huge!" then the russian guy goes "It's Russian."

Lun-class ekranoplan. crazy looking thing like it was out of an old video game.

http://www.livephysics.com/gallery/d...ekranoplan.jpg

Whoa thats awesome.

holy S*** what years was this used??

looks like it should have been in "The Fifth Element" lol

I think some were built around the cold war years. Some of them could fly up to around 250 mph too. They built little ones as well as huge ones. I think the biggest one was the Caspian Sea Monster. It was by far the coolest of all of the Ekranoplans.
http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e2...nH22/58005.jpg

Oh yeah as a side note, one of the reasons the ekranoplan failed was because of the size. It was actually considered too small! Boeing was at one time developing a version, but im not sure if the project is still going. It was supposed to be called the Pelican, and has a wingspan of 500ft and length of 400ft! The max weight is supposed to be over 2 million lbs. It will only cruise at 20ft above the water, and 20,000ft over land.

I'm curious... Why would it fly 20 feet over water and 20,000 feet over land? Difference the air?