This video was made possible by
CuriosityStream. Watch thousands of high-quality documentaries and get
access to Nebula by using the link in the description. In the 1960s the leader
of the Soviet Union bragged about having ships that could jump over bridges. His
cryptic words confused Western leaders. What he was talking about was a machine unlike anything the world had ever seen. A ship that could move as fast as an
aircraft by lifting right out of the water. And for decades the Soviets
developed a unique technology under a shroud of secrecy. But these giant,
otherworldly machines all but disappeared along with the Soviet Union. In the 1950s, the fastest boats in the
world were hydrofoils. A type of boat with wings attached to its hull. And they
were an ingenious innovation. Because at speed, the wings would lift the boat out
of the water to reduce drag. Allowing for much higher speeds. But even the fastest
hydrofoils could reach no more than 110 km/h. Held back by a phenomenon known as cavitation, which disturbed the lift generated by a
hydrofoil's wings. It was a problem that engineers would never solve. But a
pioneering Soviet hydrofoil designer by the name of Rostislav Alexeyev had a
radical idea. What if he moved the wings out of the water entirely? Doing so would
mean a shift from hydrodynamics to aerodynamics. But it would allow for
previously unimaginable speeds. Once Alexeyev's ships were moving fast enough,
they would lift right out of the water. But they wouldn't fly like aircraft.
Instead, they'd ride on a cushion of air just above the surface. Pilots had long
noticed when landing or flying very close to the ground, their planes would
seem to gain extra lift. Almost as if they didn't want to land. This phenomenon
was the ground effect. And Alexeyev would use it to revolutionize ships. To prove
his idea Alexeyev built scale models and small
prototypes. But he'd need access to a lot more resources to fully develop the
concept. And the only way that was going to happen in 1960s Soviet Union, was if
he could demonstrate the military potential of his idea. Alexeyev ships were called Ekranoplan.
And they could fly at aircraft-like speeds, low to the surface where
they'd be virtually invisible to radar. Being completely out of the water, they'd
also be invisible to sonar. And pass right over sea mines. With her small
draft, Ekranoplans could access shallow coastlines and beaches
inaccessible to conventional ships. And they promised to be relatively cheap and
simple to build. Mixing aircraft and shipbuilding construction. Alexeyev
got the attention of top military brass and even Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev. Easily swayed by big, bold projects, Khrushchev immediately saw potential in a technology that the Americans didn't
have. So the floodgates of military funding blew open. And Alexeyev and his
team went to work scaling up the idea. Over a period of just five years, they
went from small prototypes weighing no more than a few tons, to this.
A 265 ton monster they called the KM. It was a machine that looked straight
out of another dimension. The KM could travel at over 500 kilometers an hour
and lift 600 tonnes. When it was completed in 1966, it was by far the
largest flying machine, and had an impressive lift-to-drag ratio unmatched
by any aircraft. To get this enormous machine into ground effect, eight forward
mounted jet engines directed thrust underneath the wings, creating a
temporary hovercraft .Once in ground effect, the forward jet engines were shut
off, and only two engines were enough to keep 600 tons of machine moving at
aircraft-like speeds. A giant tail, five stories high, was used to counter the
inherent instability of flying within the ground effect and to provide control
at higher speeds. First tested in 1966, the KM proved that Ekranoplans could be scaled way up. But it also revealed some serious flaws. Far from robust, the KM demanded careful maintenance. It's ten jet engines were at constant risk of damage from saltwater
and foreign objects. It was also notoriously difficult to
operate. Flying safely within the ground effect was an exhausting experience for
pilots. And the KM needed enormous distances to turn. Which meant that
spotters up ahead had to give advanced warning about other ships and obstacles.
Another challenge was the weather. Supposedly that KM could operate in
waves of up to a meter and a half. Not bad. But you'll never find a photo or
video of it in anything but calm water. And getting this enormous machine moving
in high seas? Next to impossible. So the KM could only operate when
conditions were calm and on smaller inland seas like the Caspian. Travelling
on the open ocean was out of the question. These were the kind of challenges facing an engineering team developing an
entirely new kind of vehicle, from the ground up. With further development
maybe Alexeyev and his engineers could have resolved many, if not all of the
KM's issues. But it was already too late. By the time the KM made its first flight,
the Soviet Union had a new leader. And the entire mood had shifted. Brezhnev was
neither patient nor a risk-taker. He saw Ekranoplan development as an
unnecessary gamble. Instead preferring more conventional military projects. And
it was bad news for Alexeyev. In 1968, he was demoted from director of the
Hydrofoil Bureau, to merely head of a dwindling Ekranoplan program. With many
technical hurdles and fewer resources, Alexeyev and his engineers shifted their
focus from the KM to developing a smaller, more practical Ekranoplan. One
that could transport about 150 troops, roll onto beaches, and even
fly out of the ground effect. But these added capabilities came with compromises.
Like reduced lifting capacity largely in line with a similarly sized seaplane. But
with many in Soviet leadership skeptical about Ekranoplans, only
three entered service with the Soviet Navy. Alexeyevs Ekranoplans were
fast, but they couldn't outrun the Soviet Union's economic failures. With dwindling
resources Alexeyev butted heads with Soviet
leadership. And in 1975, his impatience with Soviet bureaucracy finally caught
up to him, He was demoted again. This time down to the position of an ordinary
employee. It was the beginning of the end, but not before a final a Ekranoplan was
developed for the 1980s. Not quite as large as the KM, it carried six anti-ship
cruise missiles and could strike targets over 100 kilometers away. But only a
single example was ever built. And Alexeyev would never see it fly. In 1980, he passed
away at the age of just 63, having never fully realized his vision. Funding for Ekranoplan development wound down by the mid-1980s. And after the Soviet Union
collapsed in 1991, the few Ekranoplans built were quickly pulled from service,
putting an end to nearly 40 years of development. But a belief in the
potential of Ekranoplans lives on within the former Soviet Union and
elsewhere in the world, with continued development focused on smaller ground
effect vehicles. And that leaves an intriguing question still unanswered.
With the KM, Alexeyev and his team demonstrated that the more massive an Ekranoplan got, the better it flew. Becoming more stable, flying higher, and
operating with greater efficiency. Could a machine much larger than even the KM
be the key to unlocking the technology's potential? A machine that would fly 10 or
20 meters above waves could transverse oceans. And potentially carry passengers and
cargo far more efficiently than any aircraft. But thus far, efforts to build
such a machine have failed to attract the immense resources needed for
development. And that means at least for the time being, giant Ekranoplan will
remain a relic of the Cold War. I have a fascination with all things
Soviet. Not so much this. But this. Which is why I just finished watching The
Spying Game. A fantastic three-part series that chronicles the extraordinary
lengths that the Soviet Union and the West went to learn each other's Cold War
secrets. And it's just one of thousands of full-length documentaries you can
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I believe there is only the one remaining in a warehouse somewhere in the former USSR. From memory there is a group of fanatics trying to raise money to restore it.
My memory may be unreliable.
Edit: also just realised that the answer will be in the linked video.
The commentary on the life of Alexeev, the chief designer, misses some important details:
He was not merely demoted for squabbling with the Party because the Party lost interest in Ekranoplans. It didn't, yet: but an ambitious man, he seems to have made a quite a few enemies within the ranks. Some of them got a promotion when Kruschev was outed.
Alexeev's demotion came as a result of a crash of one of the machines in testing, but looking back, it seems unusually harsh.
That demotion directly led to his death. He didn't give up building the machines, so with a few supporters, he tried to build a small one in time for the Olympics in Moscow. But he didn't have a bureau at hand to do the physical work, so he participated in all stages of the development - including physically transporting the machine from the hangar to the water, by hand (no funding for anything else).
He overstrained - got hernia from helping lift the machine (as small as it was, it was still a ship) - and died.
Alexeev's vision was never military. His speedboats were passenger craft, and he dreamed of ekranoplans floating above rivers. He painted as a hobby, and you can see this vision in his sketches. Unlike hydrofoil boats, this vision is yet to come.
I learned this from the Russian documentary with a provocative title: Burned Wings: To Betray an Engineer. I found this documentary to be rather an outlier: it was critical of both the Soviet and the new Russian government for squandering the potential of the technology, something you won't see in films produced in Russia today.
Finally, from this short video you might not grasp simply the scale of the thing. Check out Igor 113's blog, where he goes to see the semi-abandoned Lun-class, and takes copious pictures. That flying machine is huge, many stories tall - and it was one of the smaller ekranoplans!
So, why is this in my front page with no comments and no upvotes....
Well, to be honest, "ekranoplans" (literally "screen-glider") was bad by design. Tends to capsize over the tail element(unstable by the pitch). Their fuel consumption was insane. They was very expensive to produce and maintain. Also they was very hard to turn on high speed, cause they uneatable to bank due to small size of wings and water beneath.
PS
I'd like to provide some original photos of Orlyonok but can't handle how to post pics. Where is the upload button here?
Here guys some pics I made at the Naval Museum this summer.
https://i.imgur.com/WVoPLpr.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/e3Ah5E5.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/8Ky5x7F.jpg
Some say it was a boat that learned to fly, others say it was plane that tried to boat
The carbon footprint/ fuel bill on that thing must be atrocious
Elon Musk needs to get on this right away
The number of bird strikes on those things must have been incredible.