"Caspian Sea Monsters" - Ekranoplan

[mayankkrishna]

The Alexeyev fiasco wasn't the end of the troubles for the Central Hydrofoil Design Bureau.

In 1992, an Orlyonok ekranoplan ditched during a flight while preparing for a public demo. One of the crew members was killed, and the remaining nine were badly injured.

The exhibition had been intended for foreign investors. After the military draw-down that followed the end of the Soviet Union, the new government had spun off the Central Hydrofoil Design Bureau into a private company, which was then trying to drum up business. The crash was a huge drawback in efforts to develop GEVs for civilian transportation.


Outside Russia, the outlook for GEV technology is equally grim. Boeing briefly entertained the idea of building an enormous military cargo plane along the lines of the great Soviet ekranoplans. The aircraft, dubbed the Pelican, got as far as a cheesy 3-D rendering, and, according to a representative, Boeing has no plans to pursue the project further.

Though the Lun was never mass-produced, it remains a triumph of innovation and daring.

Uncharitable comparisons to the Spruce Goose may leap to mind, but unlike Howard Hughes' monstrosity, the Lun and the other hulking ekranoplans could, and did, fly — hauling huge cargoes, firing supersonic missiles and skimming the waves at 300 miles per hour.


The Lun now receives basic maintenance, but is not in flying condition and likely never will be again.

Though it now seems like a fad that has run its course, GEV technology still has disciples. True believers say the concept never got a fair shake, and its vast potential has been overlooked. Some have a messianic zeal that recalls people who stuck by their Betamax VCRs, certain of redemption. Then again, until a few years ago, advocates of electric cars sounded that way, too.



[Source:]The Soviet Superplane Program That Rattled Area 51 | Raw File | Wired.com

 

[Kunal Biswas]

 

[pmaitra]

Crossposting and consolidating:

I would like to point out that there are faster alternatives for deployment of tanks and armoured vehicles on enemy shores, the task that a landing ship is supposed to do. The best example would be the Ekranoplan.

Some images showing it (1) cruising on the surface of the sea, (2) reaching the shore, (3) on land and (4) deploying vehicles:

View attachment 1826 View attachment 1828 View attachment 1827 View attachment 1825

Shown above is the A-90 Orlyonok (Орлёнок).

References:
Ground effect vehicle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
THE EKЯANOPLAN

 

[pmaitra]

Crossposting and consolidating:

The ekranoplane concept as developed by the soviets is no longer in use except for small craft(boeing and beriev both plan to bring back the thnks but there's been little progress till date), simply put the ekranoplane is never going to be as cost effective as a Large LHD/LPD.

The Ekranoplan was scrapped because of political reasons. The inventor Rostislav Evgenievich Alexeyev was supported by Nikita Khrushchev and when Leonid Brezhnev came to power, he tried to put most things and people related to Khrushchev on the back-burner.

Moreover, I doubt the Ekranoplan was ever intended to be cost effective. It's idea is quick deployment of armoured vehicles and troops and serves as an amphibious landing craft very similar to what a landing ship tries to achieve.

Finally, I am not sure cost is ever an issue for defense projects. If we talk about cost-effectiveness, then one could argue that we should not use 4WD vehicles, tracked vehicles, turbine engines and instead of putting heavy armour on tanks, build them like a Honda Civic so that their weight is reduced and they are more fuel efficient and cheaper to manufacture.

Let me quote some advantages and disadvantages; and it's quite clear that an Ekranoplan is more fuel efficient than an aeroplane and hence more cost effective to operate and at the same time way faster than any landing ship ever can be:

Advantages and disadvantages

A ground effect craft may have better fuel efficiency than an equivalent aircraft flying at low level due to the close proximity of the ground, reducing lift-induced drag. There are also safety benefits for the occupants of the craft in flying close to the water as an engine failure will not result in severe ditching. However, this particular configuration is difficult to fly even with computer assistance. Flying at very low altitudes, just above the sea, is dangerous if the craft banks too far to one side while making a small radius turn.
A takeoff must be into the wind, which in the case of a water launch, means into the waves. This creates drag and reduces lift. Two main solutions to this problem have been implemented. The first was used by the Russian Ekranoplan program which placed engines in front of the wings to provide more lift. The Caspian Sea Monster had eight such engines, some of which were not used once the craft was airborne. A second approach is to use some form of an air-cushion to raise the vehicle most of the way out of the water, making take-off easier. This is used by German Hanno Fischer in the Hoverwing (successor to the Airfisch ground effect craft), which uses some of the air from the engines to inflate a skirt under the craft in the style of a sidewall hovercraft.

Source: Ground effect vehicle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[pmaitra]

Crossposting and consolidating:

@pmaitra-
interesting history there but the truth is the Ekranoplane was scrapped for one reason only, with the demise of the USSR the Russian navy simply couldn't find the moolah needed to keep these huge multi engined)monsters running(the only ones that kept running are the small single or twin engined ones).
The first large ekranoplane Rostislav Evgenievich Alexeyev designed was the KM or "korabl-maket". This "ship-prototype" was also the first in a series of Soviet "ekranoplan" ("screen plane") developments .This monster
weighed more than 550tonnes and used no less than 10 Dobryin VD-7 turbojets making it hugely expensive to run.this monster first first took to the air in October 1966; 2 examples were built The first copy suffered from accident in 1969, when the pilot lost the visual horizon and had water impact at high speed, because of the strong fog. The second copy also suffered an accident in 1980 by pilot error and sank in the Caspian Sea, but all the crew were rescued.


While the KM programme was ongoing, Alexeev began work on a medium-sized ekranoplan suitable for military transportation duties. Dubbed A-90 "Orlyonok" ("Eaglet"), the 140 tonne, 58 metre long aircraft had its maiden flight in 1972. The A-90 boasted two turbojets and one turboprop engine which propelled it to a speed of 400 km/h for 1,500 km at an cruise altitude of 5-10 m.

Four flying examples were built, one of which crashed in the Caspian in 1975 and was subsequently rebuilt. The aircraft entered military service in 1979 with three A-90s reportedly still operational in 1993. Thereafter, they were reportedly mothballed at the Kaspiysk naval base on the Caspian.
The 280 tonne, 74 metre long M-160 Lun was another ekranoplan developed from Alexeev designs. One was built in 1987, which entered service in 1989. A second example was under construction when the Soviet Union collapsed and, despite subsequent refitting as a search-and-rescue aircraft, remained unfinished when the authorities effectively pulled the plug on ekranoplan funding.

also The apparent success of these machines hid some very real problems, not least of which were serious stability and control deficiencies, as well as tremendous power requirements to get off the water. Under low flying conditions radar sensors measuring altitude, tilt and velocity of craft trace the variable profile of wave disturbance practically without averaging, thus making it difficult to gauge the motion parameters in relation to the undisturbed level of the sea surface. It is necessary to combine radar with other sensors in order to provide high accuracy. It has a massive turning circle, and is fairly slow to accelerate. Its poor manoeuverability means it cannot turn and run from a fight, and so is a fairly easy target if caught in a confined space, or if surrounded and pushed against the shoreline.

Also alexeyev was not the only soviet ekranoplane designer Robert Ludvigovich Bartini kept designing and testing ekranoplanes for the soviet hierarchy until his death, he was the designer of the bartini -beriev VVA-14(Pic below)

as for alexeyev

In 1975 during the tests the ekranoplane was sat on stones. Then the pilot switched the blowing-under on, and the machine left on water, flew up, and without any undue incident has reached base. But landing on stones did not pass without consequences. One case of the pre-series "Orlyonok" was made of an alloy K482T1, which is very rigid and strong, but fragile. Probably, the impacts with stones damaged the case, in the tail there were cracks, which were not noticed in the external survey. The next tests were spent at the heavy sea. During a rise from water, from impact of the damaged case about crest of a wave, the tail together with tailwings and mid-flight engine simply fell off. The pilot dumped gas of the start engines. R.E.Alekseyev, who sat in the pilot's cabin too (Main designer personally attended practically all tests), did not become puzzled, took control himself. He set the start engines on the cruiser mode, which kept the ekranoplane from plunging into water (in this case ship would sink, which would be unavoidable, as the tail was not present). This set the "Orlyonok" on the gliding mode and it landed on the coast. The people sitting in the ship got rid by a fright, but for Rostislav Alekseyev, this failure had much heavier consequences. Everyone expected, that Alekseyev would receive the rank of a Hero of the Socialist Labor for creation of ekranoplanes. But instead of the Minister of a ship-building industry B.E.Butoma, already "having a grudge" against Alekseyev for the independence of his character has used failure as the pretext and removed Alekseyev from his post of the Main designer and the CKB chief, by lowering him down to the chief of a department, and then to the chief of perspective sector.
credits for data

P.S- found a kewl pic of the Orlyonok unloading a BTR

Lun Class Ekranoplane - Project 903
In search of the Caspian Sea Monster "¢ The Register
Ekranoplanes

 

[pmaitra]

Crossposting and consolidating:

@pmaitra-
interesting history there but the truth is the Ekranoplane was scrapped for one reason only, with the demise of the USSR the Russian navy simply couldn't find the moolah needed to keep these huge multi engined)monsters running(the only ones that kept running are the small single or twin engined ones).

The demise of the USSR cut short the funding of many projects. However, Ekranoplan was relegated to the back-burner long before the demise of the USSR. It was a political reason, not economic. Please see the three videos posted at the bottom for more information on what I stated above:

also The apparent success of these machines hid some very real problems, not least of which were serious stability and control deficiencies, as well as tremendous power requirements to get off the water. Under low flying conditions radar sensors measuring altitude, tilt and velocity of craft trace the variable profile of wave disturbance practically without averaging, thus making it difficult to gauge the motion parameters in relation to the undisturbed level of the sea surface. It is necessary to combine radar with other sensors in order to provide high accuracy. It has a massive turning circle, and is fairly slow to accelerate. Its poor manoeuverability means it cannot turn and run from a fight, and so is a fairly easy target if caught in a confined space, or if surrounded and pushed against the shoreline.

• Stability control problems have been addressed and newer Ekranoplans are devoid of such deficiencies.
• Tremendous power requirement is only while takeoff. Not too different from cars that run on first gear when starting and on overdrive when cruising on a highway.
• Turning circle is massive because the craft in itself is massive. Even ships have massive turning radii. The only ships that have small turning radii are the ones that use Voith-Schneider propulsion systems (Voith Schneider Propeller - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), that are good for close quarter and slow maneuvering but poor for high speed propulsion.
• Landing Ships are landing ships (ships as in boats or any other kind of crafts) and they are not used all alone. They are supported by other vessels. Hence, whenever Ekranoplans are deployed, they will be supported by other vessels (covering fire is an old concept in battles). Thus, there is very little need for turning away from a fight. Nonetheless, I think a ship will not be able to turn away from a fight any faster than an Ekranoplan. The only thing that I can think of is that it might not have good armour like ships.

P.S- found a kewl pic of the Orlyonok unloading a BTR

Indeed, it is a cool picture and that is why I introduced the Ekranoplan into this thread. I have already posted this picture in Post #20.

Thanks for doing so much research about the Ekranoplan and posting such valuable information.

Videos:

 

[bhramos]

now this the fate of Sea monster

 

[asianobserve]

They should preserve and display that thing in a museum... Although I'm not a huge fan of the USSR, I think the Ekranoplan is one of their more curious achievement.

 

[pmaitra]

They should preserve and display that thing in a museum... Although I'm not a huge fan of the USSR, I think the Ekranoplan is one of their more curious achievement.

You can see one preserved here: Wikimapia - Let's describe the whole world!

 

[asianobserve]

How about the one in the photo above? It'll be a waste of a real curiousity if they just let it deteriorate. They can display it in another aerospace or naval museum.

 

[pmaitra]

How about the one in the photo above? It'll be a waste of a real curiousity if they just let it deteriorate. They can display it in another aerospace or naval museum.

I think some are there on the Caspian Coast and probably not accessible.

They built several different types of these machines.

 

[Ray]

Led by Alexeyev, the Soviet Central Hydrofoil Design Bureau (CHDB) was the center of ground-effect craft development in the USSR; in Russian, the vehicle came to be known as an Ekranoplan (Russian: экранопла́н, экран "screen" + план "plane", from эффект экрана, literally in Russian "screen effect", for "ground effect" in English). The military potential for such a craft was soon recognized and Alexeyev received support and financial resources from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

Some manned and unmanned prototypes were built, ranging up to eight tons in displacement. This led to the development of the "Caspian Sea Monster", a 550-ton military ekranoplan of 240 feet (73 m) length. The craft was dubbed the "Caspian Sea Monster" by U.S. intelligence experts, after a huge, unknown craft was spotted on satellite reconnaissance photos of the Caspian Sea area in the 1960s. With its short wings, it looked airplane-like in planform, but would obviously be incapable of flight. [3] Although it was designed to travel a maximum of 3 m (9.8 ft) above the sea, it was found to be most efficient at 20 m (66 ft), reaching a top speed of 300 kn (350 mph; 560 km/h) (400 kn (460 mph; 740 km/h) in research flight).

The Soviet ekranoplan program continued with the support of Minister of Defence Dmitriy Ustinov. It produced the most successful ekranoplan so far, the 125-ton A-90 Orlyonok. These craft were originally developed as high-speed military transports, and were usually based on the shores of the Caspian Sea and Black Sea. The Soviet Navy ordered 120 Orlyonok-class ekranoplans, but this figure was later reduced to fewer than 30 vessels, with planned deployment mainly in the Black Sea and Baltic Sea fleets.

A few Orlyonoks served with the Soviet Navy from 1979 to 1992. In 1987, the 400-ton Lun-class ekranoplan was built as a missile launcher. A second Lun, renamed Spasatel, was laid down as a rescue vessel, but was never finished. The two major problems that the Soviet ekranoplans faced were poor longitudinal stability and a need for reliable navigation.

Minister Ustinov died in 1985, and the new Minister of Defence, Marshal Sokolov, effectively stopped the funding for the program. Only three operational Orlyonok-class ekranoplans (with revised hull design) and one Lun-class ekranoplan remained at a naval base near Kaspiysk.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ekranoplans have been produced by the Volga Shipyard[4] in Nizhniy Novgorod. Smaller ekranoplans for non-military use have been under development. The CHDB had already developed the eight-seat Volga-2 in 1985, and Technologies and Transport developed a smaller version by the name of Amphistar.

Wiki


Advantages and disadvantages

A ground effect craft may have better fuel efficiency[clarification needed] than an equivalent aircraft due to its lower lift-induced drag. There are also safety benefits for the occupants in flying close to the water, as an engine failure will not result in severe ditching. However, this particular configuration is difficult to fly even with computer assistance. Flying at very low altitudes, just above the sea, is dangerous if the craft banks too far to one side while turning, or if a large wave occurs. Unlike an aircraft, a GEV is able to enter a harbour at slow speed into or near a town center. An important issue is the probability of collision with other conventional "slow" boats, in bad visibility conditions on dense traffic routes, due to the difference of speed.

A takeoff must be into the wind, which in the case of a water launch, means into the waves. This creates drag and reduces lift. Two main solutions to this problem have been implemented. The first was used by the Russian Ekranoplan program, which placed engines in front of the wings to provide more lift (the engines could be tilted so their exhaust blast was directed under the wing leading edge). The "Caspian Sea Monster" had eight such engines, some of which were not used once the craft was airborne. A second approach is to adopt a hybrid concept, using some form of an air cushion (see hovercraft) to raise the vehicle out of the water, making takeoff easier. This is used by Hanno Fischer in the Hoverwing (successor to the Airfisch ground effect craft), which uses some of the blowing air coming from the propellers to inflate a skirt under the craft in the style of a sidewall hovercraft.

Wiki

 

[pmaitra]

^^

Great post Ray Sir.

If I may add, TsAGI (Центра́льный аэрогидродинами́ческий институ́т) also played a vital role in perfecting the aerodynamics of the several Ekraplans.

Rostislav Evgenievich Alekseev

 

[Ray]

Actually, these crafts has excited all military thinkers and countries are still pursuing the idea.