Thursday, August 13, 2020

An Amazing Cold War Relic

News of Cold War relics still continues to trickle out of Russia. The latest I've seen is an article about the "Caspian Monster", a ground-effect jet-powered airplane that "flew" on the Caspian sea.  

On Jul. 31, 2020, Russia’s only completed MD-160 Lun class ekranoplan, towed by a tug, made its final voyage across the Caspian Sea. The trip, taking 14 hours in total, was required to move the gigantic non-operational ground effect vehicle (GEV) designed by Rostislav Evgenievich Alexeyev in 1975, from Kaspiysk naval base, where it had remained sitting unused since it was retired in the late 1990s, to Derbent, Dagestan, where it will will be put on display at the (future) Patriot Park on the Caspian Sea.

It was a remarkable machine, essentially an airliner-sized plane deisgned to use ground-effect aerodynamics to "fly"  just above the surface of the water at hundreds of miles per hour and fire ship-killing missiles. I recommend looking at the video in the article - it really is quite remarkable. 


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