(Image: Tom Wigley, cc-nc-sa-4.0)
It may look like a seaplane or hydrofoil, but this massive Lun-class ektranoplan is actually a ground effect vehicle (GEV), designed to skim across the surface of the water at five metres. The craft, however, is well and truly grounded inside a decaying Russian naval storage facility at Kaspiysk on the western shores of the Caspian Sea.
(Image: Tom Wigley, cc-nc-sa-4.0)
Known to NATO countries rather unflatteringly as the Duck, the high-speed vessel designed by Rostislav Evgenievich Alexeev entered service with the Soviet Navy’s Black Sea Fleet in 1987.
(Image: Tom Wigley, cc-nc-sa-4.0)
Numbered MD-160, the lone Lun-class ektranoplan was tasked with anti-surface warfare and carried an arsenal of guided missiles inside six launch tubes mounted on its dorsal spine.
(Image: Tom Wigley, cc-nc-sa-4.0)
Propelled by eight large Kuznetsov NK-87 turbofans positioned on either side of the forward hull, the 74-metre-long craft could carry a crew of 15 more than 1,000 miles at 350 miles per hour, just 16 feet off the deck.
(Image: Tom Wigley, cc-nc-sa-4.0)
A second Lun-class vehicle, which was poised to serve as a rapid-deployment field hospital, remained unfinished when the project was abandoned in the late 1990s.
(Image: Soviet Navy Archives)
Like other Soviet military hardware, the interior – which included a galley, toilet and crew rest areas – would likely have been rather rough and ready, ruggedly manufactured and equipped with only the most basic of comforts.
(Image: Alexandr Chechin, cc-sa-3.0)
Nevertheless, the Lun-class ektranoplan would have made for an awesome sight as it parted the waters of the Black Sea and the Caspian.
(Image: Fred Schaerli, cc-sa-3.0)
Now all but abandoned in its original dock at the neglected Kaspiysk naval facility, only time will tell as to whether this important piece of Soviet-era engineering makes it into a more permanent museum collection. (More blasts from Russia’s past here.)
The post The Soviet Navy’s Massive Lun-Class Ektranoplan Decaying by the Caspian Sea appeared first on .