The safest flight
“They found only one leg in the water, with a camouflage boot. So they buried it,”recall the eyewitnesses to the crash of the Eaglet ekranoplan in the Caspian in 1992. In the process of performing the 2nd turn, while moving on the “screen” at a height of 4 meters and a speed of 370 km / h, a “peck” occurred, longitudinal oscillations began with changes in height. In the process of hitting the water, the ekranoplan collapsed. The surviving crew members were evacuated by a civilian dry cargo ship.
The Caspian Monster ended its career in a similar way, crashing to smithereens in 1980.
The “Caspian Monster” repeated the fate of its predecessor, the SM-5 ekranoplan (a copy of the 100-meter KM on a scale of 1: 4), which died in 1964. “He swayed sharply and lifted. The pilots turned on the afterburner to climb, the device broke away from the screen and lost stability, the crew died."
Another "Orlyonok" was lost in 1972. From hitting the water, its entire feed fell off along with the keel, horizontal tail and the NK-12MK main engine. However, the pilots were not at a loss, and, having increased the speed of the nose takeoff and landing engines, they did not allow the ekranolet to plunge into the water and brought the car to the shore.
The described case is presented as an example of high survivability and safety of ekranoplanes. But the question can be formulated differently: show a ship or an airplane that is capable of tearing off its stern with one awkward movement of the steering wheel.
Another crash of the ekranoplan in August 2015
Mortal danger lies in the very idea of flying on the screen. The basic principle of an aircraft is violated: the further from the surface, the safer. As a result, the pilots do not have enough time in the event of an emergency situation to level the car and take any measures.
In the episode with the foot in the boot, the crew of the "Eaglet" was still "fortunate": their speed did not exceed 370 km / h. If something like that happened at a speed of 500-600 km / h (these are the numbers indicated in the performance characteristics of ekranoplanes), no one would have survived.
EKP becomes completely uncontrollable at high speeds. It has no contact with water, and it cannot, like an airplane, tilt its wing: there is water a few meters below it. Usually soft and pliable, at a speed of 500-600 km / h, it becomes like a stone. The density of media differs by a factor of 800. What should be the strength of the ekranoplan structure (and its weight!) To withstand such a “touch”? And what to do if a ship or other obstacle suddenly appeared directly on the course?
I'm not even talking about flights over ice or tundra. Try to “hook” your wing onto the ground at 370 km / h.
Most economical
The ekranoplan "Eaglet" had three times more fuel consumption than the An-12, similar in carrying capacity, created a quarter of a century before the "Alekseevsky miracle".
The Orlyonok's design was 85 tons heavier (dry weight 120 versus 35 tons for a transport aircraft). Threefold overspending of materials. The indicated difference (85 tons) is too large to be attributed to imperfection of materials and technologies. The brainchild of Rostislav Alekseev violated the laws of nature. The aircraft should be as lightweight as possible. The ship must be strong (and therefore heavy) to safely navigate the waves. It turned out to be impossible to combine these two requirements in one machine.
Airplanes are flying rapidly through the rarefied layers of the atmosphere. EKP drags along the water itself, where the atmospheric density reaches its maximum values. The monstrous appearance of the EKP, hung with garlands of engines, also does not help to reduce the oncoming air resistance. Some of the engines are switched off in flight and act as a useless ballast.
Hence the results. In terms of flight range, ekranoplanes are three or more times inferior to aircraft with the same payload. Despite the fact that aircraft are capable of flying anywhere in the world, regardless of the underlying terrain.
EKP does not need an airfield, but each requires a 100-meter dry dock for parking, inspection and repair. And also the maintenance of a garland of several jet engines, suffering from constant splashes of water on the compressor and the inevitable deposits of sea salt.
Ekranolet
Damn it with two! The Eaglet did not even have a barometric altimeter. The entire complex of its navigation and flight instruments was designed to fly a few meters from the surface.
No high-altitude tests have ever been carried out. There were no suicidal volunteers to sit at the wheel - the wing area is too small for such a heavy machine. Breaking away from the screen meant losing control of the car, which was “successfully” demonstrated during the crashes of both Eaglets.
Carrying capacity
The carrying capacity of the heaviest ekranoplanes of the Alekseev Design Bureau was 0.1% of the deadweight of an ocean liner container ship. And in terms of its importance it is inferior even to transport aircraft.
The carrying capacity of the Orlyonok transport and landing aircraft was three times less than that of the An-22 Antey military transport aircraft, which made its first flight in 1966.
Do not be confused by the record of the “Caspian Monster”: 544 tons is its take-off weight, of which only about a hundred tons fell on the payload. The rest is the weight of the fuselage and the "garland" of ten jet engines removed from the Tu-22 bomber squadron.
"Lun" was carrying good ballast from eight engines from the Il-86 airbuses.
“Eaglet” was also not easy. Its tail NK-12 had comparable power to the four engines of the An-12 aircraft. But that is not all. In addition to the NK-12 from the Tu-95 strategic bomber, two engines from the Tu-154 jet were hiding in the nose of the vehicle.
Needless to say, in terms of "payload", the ekranoplan corresponded to the ancient An-12? Those who created such an apparatus won the victory of technology over common sense.
The question is - for what?
The EKP was still half the speed of conventional transport aircraft. Not to mention the supersonic missile-carrying bombers.
Stealth
If radars distinguish mines floating on the surface, buoys, periscopes and submarine retractable devices, then how should the 380-ton "Lun", with a wingspan of 44 meters and a keel height of a five-story building, become invisible ?!
The same applies to the thermal and hydroacoustic background of this monster.
When detected from space, the main unmasking factor is not the sea object itself, but its wake. What is it like for the Lun ekranoplan, if its wingspan exceeds the width of the flight deck of the Mistral helicopter carrier ?!
And the power of the impact of jet streams on the surface of the water and the disturbances caused by them are clearly visible in the following video:
Missile carrier
The starting engine of the Moskit anti-ship missile system burns a ton of gunpowder in 3 seconds. This may cause problems for the wearer.
The destroyer is too big to pay attention to such trifles. Upon returning to the base, the salags will clean off the layer of soot and paint the sides with fresh paint. But what will happen to the ekranoplan flying over the water? The ingress of powder gases on the motor "garland" leads to obvious consequences:
A) Risk of surge and subsequent crash of the aircraft.
B) Damage to engines.
Plus the indispensable damage to the fuselage structure by the fiery torch of the launching accelerator.
Combat aviation does not have this problem. Guided missiles are first separated from the suspension assemblies. Their engines start after a second of free fall, at a distance of a couple of tens of meters from the carrier.
The heaviest ammunition launched directly from the suspension was the Russian unguided missile S-24 weighing 235 kg (the so-called "pencil"). The pilots flying in Afghanistan recalled that getting a surge and stopping the engines after the launch of the S-24 was as easy as shelling pears. Apart from the obvious difficulties with balancing and stabilizing the aircraft flight after the separation of a powerful heavy missile. That is why only the most experienced crews were allowed to use "pencils".
At the Peschanaya Balka training ground in the village of Chornomorsk, a model of an ekranoplan of the Lun project was installed. On October 5 and December 21, 1984, two launches of Mosquito mock-ups were carried out, equipped with only starting engines. The first launch was made from the right container of the nose pair of launchers, and the second launch was made from the left container of the tail pair of launchers.
After the first launch, 9 tiles were damaged, after the second - 2. Two launches of ZM-80 missiles were carried out in the Caspian Sea. The target was the Project 436 bis BCS. The first launch was unsuccessful due to crew errors. During the second launch, a two-rocket salvo was fired (with an interval of 5 seconds). The launch was considered successful.
Epilogue
In terms of the totality of the indicators LOAD x SPEED x COST OF DELIVERY x SAFETY x HIDDENESS, ekranoplanes have no advantages over existing vehicles. On the contrary, they lose absolutely in all respects conventional aircraft. Surpassing ships in speed, ekranoplanes are 1000 times inferior to them in terms of carrying capacity and at least 10-15 times in cruising range. In view of this, they are not even able to partially take on the tasks of maritime transport. Combat radius "Lunya" is not enough even for operations in the Black Sea, not to mention the pursuit of aircraft carriers in the Atlantic.
The use of EKP is futile even when solving a narrow range of tasks traditionally mentioned by fans of this type of technology. If they seriously wanted to create a means for providing emergency assistance to the crews of ships in distress, the choice fell on vertically taking off amphibious aircraft (such as the Soviet project of anti-submarine aircraft VVA-14). Twice the speed, half the reaction time than the ekranoplan. At the same time, due to vertical take-off and landing, such an amphibian could be used in the open ocean, with waves of 4-5 points. So much for the whole Rescuer.
As practice has shown, even such a remedy was considered redundant. In reality, it is easier to send ships passing near the crash site and reconnoitre the square with the help of coast guard aircraft and helicopters. Despite the relatively low speed (~ 200 km / h), helicopters can carefully examine the surface from a height, detecting and removing people from a drifting life raft.
Those who advocate the construction of these slaughterhouses simply try not to notice the real facts about the operation of ekranoplanes point-blank. After comparing the parameters of "Lune" and "Eaglet" with conventional aircraft, there is no doubt about the futility of this type of technology. Multiple lagging behind in all flight performance, efficiency and payload, aggravated by the complexity of operation and the absence of any need for 500-ton aircraft flying over the water itself with the help of "garlands" of ten aircraft engines.
