When, one day in the second half of the 1960s, another report with the results of deciphering photographs of a spy satellite lay on the table of the director of the US National Intelligence Agency, he could not believe his eyes. In one of the photographs, a huge, about 100 meters long, apparatus of a completely unknown design was flying over the water surface of the Caspian Sea. This was not the first ekranoplan designed by Rostislav Alekseev. Before the appearance of the An-225 Mriya, the model ship KM was known as the heaviest aircraft on Earth.
The overwhelming majority of American experts doubted the "Russian miracle", mistaking it for a well-conducted hoax, the purpose of which was to make Washington nervous and direct military research in an unnecessary direction. And even if this is not a hoax, then in any case, the American experts considered, such a large aircraft-ship cannot be an effective combat means, and the very idea of building such devices for military purposes, whether it is a transport ekranoplan or its armed version, is not has supposedly no prospects for the foreseeable future. True, there were individual engineers abroad who believed in the reality of the "Caspian Monster" and the great future of ekranoplanes.
Sea ship or plane?
The very idea of a ship-plane was nothing new. The phenomenon, which received the name of the ground effect, was experimentally revealed at the beginning of the twentieth century - with approaching the screen (the surface of water or earth), the aerodynamic force on the wing of the aircraft increased. The aviators found that when approaching, in the immediate vicinity of the ground, piloting an airplane was often seriously complicated, it seemed that it seemed to sit on an invisible cushion, preventing it from touching a hard surface.
Naturally, the pilots and aircraft designers did not need such an effect at all, but there were also those who were able to consider something more behind it - the basis for a new direction in the design of transport equipment. So, in a first approximation, the idea arose to create an aircraft of a new type, an ekranoplan - from the French words écran (screen, shield) and planer (to hover, plan).
Speaking in scientific and technical terms, ekranoplans are aircraft that use the effect of increasing the aerodynamic quality of an aircraft (the ratio of the coefficient of its aerodynamic lift to the coefficient of drag) due to the proximity of the screen (the surface of the earth, water, etc.).), due to the fact that with approaching the screen, the aerodynamic lift on the wing increases.
At the same time, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) today classifies ekranoplans as sea-going ships, and their further development was an ekranoplane, which can not only follow on the screen, but also break away from it and fly at high altitudes, like an ordinary plane.
Screen effect for dummies
The screen effect is very similar to the effect of the air cushion on which the corresponding ships are moving. Only in the case of a screen, this pillow is formed by forcing air not by special devices - fans located on the ship, but by the oncoming stream. That is, the wing of the ekranoplan creates lift not due to the pressure drop over the upper plane, as in "normal" aircraft, but due to the increased pressure under the lower plane, which can only be created at very low altitudes - from several centimeters to several meters, depending on on the size of the wing and ekranoplan. Moreover, in large ekranoplanes, the flight height "on the screen" can reach 10 meters or more. The wider and longer the wing and the lower the speed, the stronger the effect.
An experienced ekranoplan is a manned self-propelled model SM-6, on which technical ideas were worked out, which became the basis for the first serial ekranoplan "Orlyonok". SM-6 had one main engine mounted on the keel, and two starting, "blower" engines. The SM-2 was built according to a new aerohydrodynamic layout scheme - with a low-lying herringbone located in the bow of the hull. The ekranoplan design is all-metal, riveted
First experiences
At one time, the French inventor Clement Ader tried to use the screen effect (still undiscovered then), in 1890 he built and tested the boat "Aeolus", which had a large folding wing and a tail horizontal stabilizer, which made it possible to partially unload the displacement vessel. Under the wing of the car, special channels were made through which, due to the high-speed pressure, the air that lifted the boat was supplied. Later, Ader built a boat, in which air was supplied under the wing using a compressor.
The main work on new devices using the screen effect during their movement dates back to the early 1930s, although theoretical works on this topic began to be published much earlier. So, for example, in 1922 in the USSR an article was published by an aerodynamicist Boris Nikolaevich Yuriev "The Earth's Influence on the Aerodynamic Properties of a Wing". In it, the inventor of the swashplate (a device for controlling the rotor blades), the future full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and Lieutenant General of the Engineering and Technical Service, actually gave the green light to the creation of ekranoplanes, theoretically substantiating the possibility of practical use of the ground effect.
In general, the contribution of domestic scientists and engineers to ekranoplan construction is enormous, if not decisive. Experts are well aware of, probably, the first practical development in this area - the project of an amphibious ekranolette proposed by the Soviet aviation engineer Pavel Ignatievich Grokhovsky. “I got the idea to use an“air cushion”, that is, the compressed air formed under the wings from the flight speed. The amphibious ship can fly and glide not only over the land, over the sea and the river, - wrote P. I. Grokhovsky in the early 1930s. - Flying over the river is even more expedient than over the ground, because the river is a long, smooth road, without hillocks, hills and bumps … The amphibious ship allows you to transfer goods and people at a speed of 200-300 km / h all year round, in summer on floats, skiing in winter”.
US military transport ship Columbia, designed in 1962. The project remained unfulfilled
And already in 1932, Grokhovsky and his comrades-in-arms designed a full-scale model of a new marine flying catamaran, which had a center section with a large chord, end elements in the form of float fuselages and two promising M-25 engines with a capacity of about 700 hp placed in the bows of the last. sec., as well as a rotary flap, which made it possible to increase the lift during takeoff and landing. This "proto-screen" could glide at a low height above any flat surface. Moreover, the aerodynamic layout of a rather large machine by the standards of that time is also characteristic of a number of modern vehicles of this class.
In the winter of the same year, the Finnish engineer Toomas Kaario, who in the West is considered "the first creator of a real ekranoplan", began testing an aircraft he designed using the screen effect and built according to the "flying wing" scheme. The experiments were carried out on the ice of a frozen lake: the ekranoplan was not self-propelled and was towed by a snowmobile. And only in 1935-1936, Toomas Kaario managed to build an ekranoplan equipped with one 16-horsepower engine and a propeller, but his plane-ship flew only a few meters and fell apart. After World War II, he continued to work in this area and created several more experimental devices, but none of them went into series.
In 1940, the American engineer D. Warner created an outlandish apparatus, which he called a compressor plane. It was actually a boat equipped with a system of wings, floating on the water, but not on an air cushion like modern KVP, but on the air flow created by two powerful fans located in the bow and pumped under the bottom of the vessel. The cruising "sailing" mode was provided by two aircraft engines with propellers located on the main wing. Thus, the American for the first time proposed to separate the launch (inflated) and sustainer power plants.
One of the active supporters of ekranoplanovka in the USSR was Robert Bartini, under whose direct supervision the ekranolet was created - a vertically taking off amphibious aircraft VVA-14M1P with a maximum take-off weight of 52 tons and a flight range of about 2500 km
Interest on paper
Only a few years after the end of World War II, interest in ekranoplans resumed. The United States tried to seize the palm here - already in 1948, engineer H. Sundstedt created a six-seat apparatus. And the designer William Bertelson in 1958-1963 flew into the air several ekranoplanes with engines up to 200 hp. with. and made several important reports on this topic at various scientific symposia and congresses. In the same 1963, engineer N. Disinson also built an ekranoplan, the next year the Swiss H. Weiland created his ekranoplan in the USA, which, however, crashed during tests in California.
Finally, at the scientific conference "Hydrofoil and Hovercraft" held on September 17-18, 1962 in New York by the American Institute of Aerospace Research, the President of Vehicle Research Corporation Scott Rethorst presented the project developed with his personal participation and with the support of the US Maritime Administration 100-ton ekranoplan "Columbia", created according to the "flying wing" scheme and capable of speeds up to 100 knots. The British, who did not want to lag behind, then announced the project of an aircraft carrier ekranoplan proposed by the designer A. Pedrick - it was supposed to base up to 20-30 aircraft on it.
In 1964, Rethorst began building a model of his "miracle ship". On the basis of the obtained results of his own work, Rethorst patented in 1966 "A ship using a screen effect" (patent No. 19104), but this did not go further, and the project was soon abandoned. Moreover, in the same 1966, Grumman specialists proposed an equally ambitious project of a 300-ton ekranoplan capable of carrying guided missiles.
The greatest success in the West was achieved by the famous German aircraft designer Alexander Lippisch, who during the Second World War became the ideological inspirer of the project of the Me-163 Kometa jet fighter, and after the collapse of the Third Reich, settled in the United States.
The team of Rostislav Alekseev offered more than a dozen variants of ekranoplanes and ekranoplanes for various purposes. Shown here is a supply ekranoplane, which was proposed to be used as part of the armed forces, the Ministry of the Navy and other agencies to support the actions of ship and air groupings in remote areas of the World Ocean. For example, to provide fuel for helicopters. The rescue ekranoplan "Rescuer" should have looked almost the same.
Working from 1950 to 1964 in the aviation division of the Collins Radio Company, Alexander Lippish led the development of the basic aerodynamic scheme of the ekranoplan (one of the three existing today, and very successful), called the Lippisch scheme. It is distinguished by a hip-shaped wing, which retains the air pressure between the wing and the screen well and has the lowest inductive resistance. The plumage is located high above the wing in a T-shaped pattern, and floats at the ends of the wing and a planing hull-boat are used to launch it from the water.
Unfortunately, in 1964, Lippish fell ill and had to leave the company, but he managed to propose a project for the Kh-112 ekranoplan. Having recovered from his illness, in 1966 he created his own company Lippisch Research Corporation and four years later offered a new model of the X-113, and four years later - his last project of the Kh-114 ekranoplan, which in a five-seater patrol version ordered by the Ministry of Defense of the Federal Republic of Germany was built and put into service.
“From the pier, slowly picking up speed, a small motorboat, equipped with a powerful engine, and a strange-looking apparatus, resembling a short-winged seaplane, moved. Having developed a speed of about 80 km / h, "hydro" broke away from the surface and, without gaining, as it should be, height, glided over the lake, leaving the motorboat far astern "- and this is about the test of the first ship-aircraft over the Rhine in 1974 built by Gunther Jörg, a student of Lippisch and the inventor of the third ekranoplan scheme. In the "tandem" scheme, two approximately identical wings are located one after the other, it has longitudinal stability, but in a limited range of pitch angles and flight altitudes.
True, all these projects and developments did not go beyond paper, small models or experimental machines. That is why when, in 1966-1967, the Americans learned that a 500-ton colossus was hovering over the waves of the Caspian Sea, they experienced surprise mixed with disbelief.
Eaglet-type ekranoplanes were built from 1974 to 1983
Italian aristocrat
Soviet designers again outstripped their foreign competitors - by and large, only the Soviet command-administrative economy and science and industry subordinate to the authorities were able to cope with such a grandiose and difficult task as the creation of large, not small (one or two tons) ekranoplanes and ekranoplans.
So, for example, back in 1963, students of the Odessa Institute of Naval Engineers under the leadership of Yu. A. Budnitsky developed a single-seat ekranoplan OIIIMF-1 equipped with an 18-horsepower Izh-60K engine. By 1966, the students had already built the third model - OIIIMF-3 (according to the "flying wing" scheme). But these were only "amateurs", professionals were required for the development of ekranoplanostroeniya. One of them was the Soviet designer Robert Ludwigovich Bartini (aka the Italian aristocrat Roberto Oros di Bartini), who left his homeland in the 1920s and then wrote in his personal data in the column “nationality” - “Russian”, explaining his decision in a very original way: “Every 10-15 years, the cells of the human body are completely renewed, and since I have lived in Russia for over 40 years, not a single Italian molecule is left in me”.
It was Bartini who developed the "Theory of Intercontinental Earth Transport", where he evaluated the performance of various types of vehicles - ships, aircraft and helicopters - and determined that the most effective for intercontinental routes is an amphibious vehicle with vertical takeoff and landing or using an air cushion. Only in this case it would be possible to successfully combine the large carrying capacity of ships, high speed and maneuverability of aircraft.
Bartini started work on the project of an ekranoplan with hydrofoils, from which the ekranoplan SVVP-2500 with a takeoff weight of 2500 tons, which looks like a "flying wing" with a square center section and consoles and equipped with a power plant of lifting and sustainer engines, subsequently emerges. The results of model tests in 1963 at TsAGI turned out to be promising. After some time, Bartini decided to modify the first prototype 1M into an ekranolit, with air blowing from additional engines under the center section. But he was not destined to see the flight of his 14M1P - in December 1974, Bartini passed away. The ekranolet soared into the sky, but already in 1976 the VVA-14M1P project (a high-positioned wing and a supporting body, an estimated maximum speed of 760 km / h and a practical ceiling of 8000-10,000 meters) was closed.
The next strategic breakthrough in the design of aircraft-ships took place in Gorky: Rostislav Alekseev became the author of the new project.
The most "fresh" product of the creative work of American specialists in the field of ekranoplane construction was the project of a heavy military transport ekranoplane "Pelican", capable, according to calculations, of taking on board up to 680 tons of cargo and transferring it to transoceanic distances - up to 18,500 km
The birth of the "dragon"
The first domestic manned jet ekranoplan SM-1 with a takeoff weight of 2380 kilograms was made at the Central Design Bureau for hydrofoils with Alekseev's direct participation in 1960-1961. It is based on the "tandem" or "point-to-point" scheme. In the first flight, it is piloted by the "chief" himself, and in the late autumn of 1961, Alekseev "rode" the apparatus of the all-powerful Dmitry Ustinov, then still deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, and chairman of the State Committee for Shipbuilding Boris Butomu. With the latter, however, a bad luck came out - on the very first tack, the fuel ran out. While the tugboat arrived, the official was chilled to the bone and after that, as contemporaries say, he literally hated the "flying ships" "alien" to the shipbuilding industry, and Alekseev himself too. We know his words, expressed about the ekranolet: "That which flies above the telegraph pole, the court industry is not engaged!" If not for Dmitry Ustinov and the commander-in-chief of the Navy Sergei Gorshkov, this article would have to talk only about German and American ekranoplanes.
In the early 1960s, the Soviet Navy became actively interested in the topic of ekranoplanes, ordering the development of three types: transport-assault, strike and anti-submarine. But the "tandem" scheme was not suitable for them, so Alekseev developed a new one, according to which the second ekranoplan, the SM-2, is being built. For this device, for the first time, the air jet from the engine was directed under the wing (blowing), creating a forced dynamic air cushion.
From now on, the layout of the ekranoplan is as follows: a wide, low wing of low aspect ratio; end washers on the wing, which improve near-screen aerodynamics and reduce the inductive drag of the wing; developed T-shaped tail, high keel and a horizontal stabilizer with an elevator mounted high on it; aerodynamically perfect hull with a re-slit bottom; a certain placement of engines and the organization of airflow under the wing. Starting from the water and going ashore are provided with an air cushion of a flow-through scheme - the engines deflect the air jets under the wing. Such a scheme required more stabilization work, but it made it possible to achieve higher speeds and carrying capacities.
1964 was a tragic year - during tests, the SM-5 fell into a powerful oncoming air stream, it swayed and lifted sharply, the pilots turned on the afterburner to climb, but the device broke away from the screen and lost stability, the crew died. I had to urgently build a new model - CM-8.
Finally, in 1966, the giant ekranoplan KM (“model ship”), created within the framework of the Dragon project, was tested, and Alekseev began work on it back in 1962. The ship was laid on the slipway on April 23, 1963 - it was built as a combat ekranoplan for the Navy and was supposed to fly at a height of several meters. Two years later, work began on the project of the T-1 military transport ekranolitel for the Airborne Forces, which was supposed to rise to an altitude of 7,500 meters. Its carrying capacity would be up to 40 tons, which would ensure the transfer of a medium tank and an infantry platoon with weapons and equipment to a range of up to 4,000 kilometers, or 150 paratroopers with equipment (near the screen), or at a distance of 2,000 kilometers (at an altitude of 4,000 meters).
On June 22, 1966, the CM was launched and sent to a special test base on the Caspian Sea, near the city of Kaspiysk. For almost a month, half-flooded, with a detached wing and covered with a mask net, at night, in the strictest secrecy, was dragged along the Volga. By the way, about the secrecy: contemporaries recalled that it was on the day the CM was launched on the water that the Voice of America radio station announced that this shipyard had built a ship with a new principle of movement!
When KM arrived at the base, the officials demanded an "immediate flight," and Alekseev arranged for them to "fly to the dock." All 10 engines started working, the cables holding the apparatus were taut like strings, a wooden fence that got under the engine exhaust began to break on the shore, and at a thrust of 40% of the nominal, the dock with the KM ekranoplan moored in it, breaking the anchors, got under way. Then the car went out to sea - the heavy giant showed phenomenal qualities, steadily following over the screen at an altitude of 3-4 meters at a cruising speed of 400-450 km / h. At the same time, the device was so stable in flight that the “main” sometimes stopped controlling the device for display and even turned off the engines in flight.
In the course of work on the CM, many questions arose that needed to be resolved as soon as possible. For example, it turned out that the standard shipbuilding alloy AMG-61, used for the main hull, and the aircraft alloy D-16, used in the superstructure of the "monster", do not provide the required weight return. The Soviet metallurgists had to invent new, stronger and lighter alloys, which are also extremely resistant to corrosion.
The tests of the "Caspian Monster" were carried out at sea for a decade and a half, but ended very sadly: on February 9, 1980, Rostislav Alekseev died. And in the same year, the KM dies - the pilot lifted the nose of the car too sharply during takeoff, it quickly and almost vertically went up, the confused pilot abruptly dropped the thrust and did not operate the elevator according to the instructions - the ship collapsed on the left wing and, hitting the water, sank. The unique giant could not outlive its creator.
The full displacement of the Orlyonok is 140 t, length 58.1 m, width 31.5 m, speed up to 400 km / h (it can cross the Caspian Sea in just an hour), takeoff from a wave up to 1.5 m and when the sea is rough up to 4 points, crew of 9 people, carrying capacity 20 tons (a company of marines with full weapons or two armored personnel carriers or infantry fighting vehicles)
"Eaglet" learns to fly
In the 1970s, work in this area was literally in full swing. Alekseev did not have time to realize the "big leap", having switched from 5-ton models directly to a 500-ton CM, as in 1968 the Navy issues a task for the Project 904 Orlyonok airborne transport aerial vehicle. And now a new success - in 1972, an experimental SM-6 appears. The main requirements are high carrying capacity and speed, as well as the ability to overcome anti-amphibious obstacles and minefields (when capturing bridgeheads on the enemy's protected coast).
The T-1 project was taken as a basis, the scheme is a normal aircraft, three-engine low-wing aircraft with a T-shaped tail unit and a submarine hull. Crew - commander, co-pilot, mechanic, navigator, radio operator and gunner. When transporting the landing force, two technicians were additionally included in the crew.
The T-1 hull is made in one piece with the center section and consisted of three parts - the bow rotary (rotated 90 degrees), the middle (cargo and passenger compartment) and the stern. In the bow there was a cockpit, a machine-gun mount, a rest cabin and compartments for various equipment. The admirals, carried away in those years by the creation of a powerful ocean-going nuclear missile fleet, intended to purchase up to 100 "eagles", which would require the construction of new factories, which were supposed to organize a block-aggregate assembly method. Then, however, the order was adjusted to 24.
On November 3, 1979, the naval flag was raised on the MDE-150 landing craft of the "Eaglet" type and the ship was included in the Caspian Flotilla. The second unit entered the Navy after the death of the "chief", in October 1981. Both ships took part in the exercises of the Transcaucasian Military District - the ship could take on board up to 200 marines or two amphibious tanks, armored personnel carriers or infantry fighting vehicles for disembarkation. And in 1983 the fleet took over the third ekranolet, MDE-160. Today we have only one "miracle ship" of this type left - the one in Moscow.
In 1988, it was decided to reveal the tactical capabilities of the "Eaglet" more fully. The task was formulated as follows: to transfer troops from the Baku region to the Krasnovodsk region. To solve it, ordinary ships, hovercraft and an ekranolit were attracted for comparison. The first went to sea a day before the X hour, the second - in six hours, and the "Eaglet" left in two hours, overtook everyone on the road and landed the first landing party!
Ekranoplan-missile carrier of project 903 "Lun". Full displacement - up to 400 tons, length - 73.3 m, width - 44 m, height - 20 m, draft in displacement position - 2.5 m, full speed - about 500 km / h, crew - 15 people, armament - 8 launchers of supersonic anti-ship missiles 3M-80 "Mosquito"
Leader change
The apogee of ekranoplan construction in our country was the Lun missile carrier (project 903), built by order of the USSR Navy and surpassing almost all light missile ships and many attack aircraft in its combat potential, and in terms of the power of a missile salvo it turned out to be comparable to a missile destroyer. "Lun" was launched on July 16, 1986, and on December 26, 1989, its tests were completed, the total duration of which was 42 hours 15 minutes, of which 24 hours in flight. During the tests, rocket firing was fired from the ekranoplan for the first time - at a speed of about 500 km / h. The second ship of Project 903 was laid down in Gorky in 1987, but then it was decided to convert it from a missile carrier into a search and rescue version, conventionally named the Rescuer. The vehicle has a capacity of 500 people, a take-off weight of 400 tons, a flight speed of more than 500 km / h, a flight range of up to 4000 kilometers. The project envisages a hospital with an operating room and an intensive care unit at the Rescuer, as well as a special treatment post to provide assistance to victims of an accident at nuclear power plants. At the same time, the wing of the ekranoplan could be used for the rapid simultaneous deployment and launching of life-saving equipment, including during high seas. The "Rescuer" on duty could go to sea within 10-15 minutes after the alarm.
But perestroika soon followed, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union - the country had no time for "miracle ships". The Strizh training aerial vehicle, which was handed over to the fleet in 1991, did not find much use, the Lun did not even leave the stage of trial operation, and the Rescuer remained unfinished on the slipway. The rest of the cars were either lost in accidents and disasters, or simply abandoned on the shore. Small civilian ekranoplanes, such as "Volga-2", did not go into production.
Today, the United States is trying to become a leader in this field, actively conducting work on manned and even unmanned ekranoplanes and ekranoplans and diligently accumulating not only ideas and developments carried out in other countries.
For example, for several years, the American corporation Boeing, with the active participation of Phantom Works, commissioned by the Pentagon, has been designing a heavy military transport aircraft Pelican, which has a wingspan of more than 150 meters and is capable, according to the developer, cargo weighing up to 680 tons for a distance of up to 18,500 kilometers. It is planned to equip the Pelican with a 38-wheelset chassis for take-off and landing from a conventional runway. Fragmentary information about this program began to arrive a long time ago, but for the first time detailed information on the Boeing ekranolet was published only in 2002. It is planned to use the Pelican on transoceanic routes, which will allow, for example, to transfer up to 17 M1 Abrams tanks in one trip. It is argued that thanks to four new turboprop engines, the device will be able to climb to an altitude of 6100 meters, but in this case, outside the screen, the flight range will be reduced to 1200 kilometers.
But the American company Oregon Iron Works Inc., specializing in the field of industrial construction and the production of marine equipment, under a contract with the US Department of Defense, is conducting a preliminary study of the project the name "Sea Scout", or "Sea Scout".
Other countries are not lagging behind Washington. For example, in September 2007, the South Korean government announced plans to build by 2012 a 300-ton commercial ekranoplan capable of transporting up to 100 tons of cargo at a speed of 250-300 km / h. Its estimated dimensions are: length - 77 meters, width - 65 meters, the program budget until 2012 is $ 91.7 million. And representatives of the Chinese Shanghai University of Civil Engineering announced recently that they are completing the development of projects for several models of ekranoplanes weighing 10-200 tons at once, and by 2017 more than 200 ekranoplanes capable of carrying loads weighing more than 400 tons will be released for regular transportation. And only in Russia they cannot find money even for the completion of the unique ekranoplan "Rescuer" …
