In March 1963, Rostislav Alekseev was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, he had many new responsibilities. His secretary, Maria Ivanovna Grebenshchikova, sorted the increased mail into three large piles every day: bureaus directly related to affairs, "doctoral" ones associated with various scientific consultations, and deputy letters.
And in the schedule of urgent matters Alekseev included every month deputy receptions in the premises of the district executive committee. The area was difficult for him, the center of the city, he was assailed by housing requests.
Alekseev was afraid not to have time to do everything that was planned. But he had his time-tested friends, although they sometimes left the race. Ivan Ivanovich Erlykin has long been included in the four founders, which has been with Alekseev from the very beginning. True, Yerlykin had a long break in design work when he was elected secretary of the plant's party committee. It was not so easy for him to return to creative activity in a few years, to head a large department. Yerlykin held the exam on the "Seagull", introducing a water-jet engine on the new ship.
The Chaika, however, like every Alekseev ship, has become a laboratory for the new. Its diesel engine and water jet propeller developed almost a hundred-kilometer speed, and the ship with such aviation speed could move in shallow water, since it had a draft of only twenty to thirty centimeters. And this opened the blue paths of the countless small rivers of the country in front of the river bus.
In the summer of the sixty-third year, "The Seagull" went to Moscow, to Khimki, but at first river sailors, unaccustomed to such speeds, were afraid to let her out through the canal and the reservoir, where there are always cramped large and small motor ships.
On July 21, members of the party and government delegation of the Hungarian People's Republic headed by Janos Kadar, together with the leaders of the Soviet government, rode along the Moscow Canal on the Maksim Gorky motor ship.
The day turned out to be clear, the clouds, which had covered the sky in the morning, dispersed, from the board of the ship opened the green suburbs of Moscow. From the Lesnoye pier, the participants of the walk made their way back aboard the fast ship on hydrofoils - "Meteor-3". The participants of the walk admired the pine groves and meadows, the picturesque banks of the canal, where there were many swimmers, and yachts glided along the surface of the reservoir with white-winged birds.
But then it so happened that the same course as the "Meteor", I went along the "Chaika" channel. She moved almost twice as fast as her older winged brother.
Sliding through the water literally "like a fleeting vision", the "Seagull" quickly disappeared from sight. Party and government leaders have expressed a desire to inspect this new ship, which has reached 100 km speed for the first time in the world.
In the meantime, the ministry approved an order for a series of marine "Comets": "Comet-3" was manufactured.
And also "Whirlwind" made me happy: it successfully walked along the Odessa - Kherson line.
In the Soviet Union, the construction of hydrofoils is going on extensively. Every year, the Central Design Bureau released new models. But Alekseev himself is already busy with another project.
Alekseev had another idea. The sixth model is a winged turbo-rover. This is an unprecedented vessel with a gas turbine aircraft engine, with water-jet propellers, with a speed of 100 kilometers per hour. It was a step towards the ocean.
Ocean! Conquering rivers and seas for his ships, Alekseev had long thought about the ocean.
For him, the road to the ocean began on the Volga, in the harbor of the plant. The dream of the ocean inspired the student projects of the students of the Gorky Polytechnic Institute. Now, more than twenty years later, the Black Sea became the prologue to a poem about the ocean.
Yes, the winged ships will go to the ocean. Alekseev did not doubt this. Once a student, he presented his first project of a sea vessel. But how could he have imagined then that his audacious dream would turn into reality so soon!
Winged Oceanic Fleet! He will! With what speeds will it hover over the waves? What new and unprecedented form of ship hulls will the designers' imagination give birth to? What engines and power sources will give these ships the mighty power to fly over the ocean? We still need to think about this.
And the timing? Ten, five years? Who will undertake to accurately determine this in an age of incredible acceleration of technological progress?
They say that happy is the person who has ten years of creative ideas in advance. Alekseev would have had enough time to improve only one river winged ships, which brought him fame. But he did not stop, went further into the sea, the ocean. He intended not only to develop the idea of winged ships. He was looking for new, revolutionary ideas in shipbuilding. Such is the restless nature of genuine innovation.
In 1960, the documentary The Winged Ship was released. The film is short, only 10 minutes. The story begins with barge haulers on the Volga and somewhere in the middle appears the main character - a winged ship. Expert Sergey Dadyko, a specialist in the history of domestic shipbuilding and water transport, commenting on the film, says that the developments were carried out in different countries, but the priority belonged to our country. This is the merit of Alekseev. For example, the American company Boeing tried to create something similar, but it failed. The created ship "Jetfoil" could carry only 250 passengers at a speed of about 90 kilometers per hour.
Along with civilian courts, work was actively underway on military models. In the early 50s, several torpedo boats were manufactured, which received the name - project "K123K". The hydrofoils were in the bow. This became another idea of Alekseev, which was finally brought to life. Indeed, back in 1940, Alekseev sent a report to the Naval Directorate. He talked about building a boat with a speed of 100 knots. This is almost 200 kilometers per hour.
The first combat hydrofoil boat was made in 1945. The country's navy received a completely new type of torpedo boat. For this work, Alekseev in 1951 was given the Stalin Prize and his own laboratory.
And Alekseev also created a unique machine - an ekranoplan. In an atmosphere of strict secrecy, a prototype of the car was shown to Nikita Khrushchev. None of the secretary general's entourage on that day did not fully understand what kind of car it was. Alekseev reported: “The combat vehicle will be several times larger, with a cruising speed equal to that of an aircraft. It will be able to carry weapons, hundreds of tons of cargo. " And, summing up his speech, he said: "There are no analogues in the world." It was Dmitry Ustinov's idea - to demonstrate a demonstration flight to the first person of the state. The Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Gorshkov could not believe his own eyes and asked the designer: "So is this a ship or an airplane?" But the Minister of Shipbuilding Boris Butoma could hardly restrain his irritation. He didn't like the prospect of building these exotic cars. And everyone was waiting for what Khrushchev would say. And Khrushchev was shocked by this demonstration. “We need such a machine,” he said.
- It's all written on the water with a pitchfork, - said the Minister of Shipbuilding Butoma, where conservatism soared for centuries. It was very difficult to break the worked out system.
- You know, maybe I know less about technology than you do, but I trust people. Alekseev created hydrofoil ships, I am sure he will create this development, - said Khrushchev.
Alekseev's direct boss, Minister Boris Butoma, was dissatisfied."It climbs over my head," he thought.
Alekseev did not yet know that he had made an enemy for himself for many years. But the brilliant designer worked despite the bureaucratic intrigues. Wing boats have a speed limit. So we must move on. Overcome this barrier. Even in his youth, when Alekseev received prizes for winning races on yachts from the hands of Chkalov himself, he heard from the pilot about the mysterious screen effect.
This effect was discovered at the dawn of aviation. He was a curse for aviators. Often it became the cause of their death. A few meters from the ground, the air seemed to push the car off the ground, preventing the planes from landing. It is no coincidence that only an experienced pilot could fly at low altitude, keeping the plane on the wrong air cushion.
In 1927, in Leningrad, Valery Chkalov flew under the arches of an undivided bridge. The trick was hooligan. But one of those that a master can do.
Scientists argued: you cannot use the screen effect for good. But since his youth Rostislav Alekseev could not stand the words "impossible" and "impossible." He was a practitioner. He believed in the power of experience, experiment.
“Everyone is taught to read, but, unfortunately, they don’t observe,” Alekseev liked to repeat.
He very carefully studied everything related to the theory of the wing both in water and in the air. And it is impossible to clearly draw the line in time: here Alekseev was engaged in hydrofoil vessels, and here he was engaged in an ekranoplane. Everything went side by side.
Among the many drawings Alekseev made in 1947, there is one that depicts a project of an unusual apparatus. Signature: "Ekranoplan". And next: "It was decided to devote my life to the creation of a new type of transport." The country is struggling to rise from the knees of the post-war devastation, and he comes up with a fantastic machine of the future for it, which in fifteen years makes a reality.
Alekseev completely pulls the ship out of the water. Makes you slide over water, land. A dynamic air cushion arises under it, which itself keeps a multi-ton vehicle traveling at the speed of an aircraft. The ship was no longer dependent on water resistance. He became flying. The path to new speeds was open.
It was the rarest case when one person pulled out two completely new technical directions.
The top leadership of the country is discussing the new car of Rostislav Alekseev at a meeting. Nobody fully knows all the capabilities of the ekranoplan. But the general designer is confident in the car. The state program of ekranoplanostroeniya is being adopted.
In August 1963, the first ekranoplan with the working name "Ship-layout", or simply KM, was laid at the plant in Gorky. This is how a new, grandiose designer project usually started, and with it a new direction in world shipbuilding.
The shortest (only five years), but the happiest period of Alekseev's life begins. Its golden time. Now Alekseev has his own design bureau, his own experimental plant, and a unique testing base. All work of the Central Design Bureau on ekranoplan is classified.
In 1963, Korolev, Tupolev, Myasishchev came to Gorky to see Alekseev. They want to see what kind of unprecedented technique the shipbuilder is creating. The audacity of his ideas amazes even the luminaries of aviation. A huge flying ship is being built on the slipway of the plant. The length is 100 meters. Weight - 500 tons, ten turbojet engines. Even today, what Alekseev has proved in practice cannot be calculated on a computer. Does not work. He had tremendous engineering intuition.
He was not very talkative. He did not keep diaries. But his drawings speak volumes. Tall, under two meters, he attracted everyone's attention.
In work on the ekranoplan, he needed the help of two industries - aviation and shipbuilding. We needed special alloys and engines. Sometimes it reached the point of absurdity. The ships were ordered to hang anchors, aviation officials were looking for a chassis.
- Where is the chassis? It's not solid without a chassis, - the officials said.
The Ministry of the Shipbuilding Industry believed that the ekranoplan was an airplane. And there is nothing to do here with handicraft - contact the Ministry of Aviation Industry, where this plane will be made quickly. And there they thought the same way.
Alekseev was torn between Gorky and Moscow. In 1964 he came to Brezhnev. The visa of the Central Committee secretary in charge of the country's defense was needed for some next important paper. Brezhnev refused to sign. Alekseev told him that he would complain to Khrushchev. Brezhnev began to shout at the designer.
- Complain, complain! - Brezhnev repeated with some inner pleasure.
Soon, the Plenum of the Central Committee elected Brezhnev as first secretary. Khrushchev was dismissed. Alekseev was left without an all-powerful patron.
But for now, the country's leadership is taking care of Alekseev. His name is one of the six names of designers who, by order of the Central Committee, are prohibited from testing the equipment themselves. But Alekseev violates the ban. He learns to fly an airplane, so that he can then sit at the helm of the ekranoplan.
A completely different driving technique is needed. After all, the pilot could, out of habit, pull the wheel towards himself and thereby deprive the ship of the screen and destroy himself. This is exactly what happened on August 25, 1964. That morning, near Gorky, a self-propelled model SM-5, the prototype of the future large ekranoplan, was tested. The model had already taken off from the water, when suddenly the pilot pulled the steering wheel towards himself. The car lifted its nose, rocked, and a few seconds later fell into the water. The pilot and engineer were killed. All work was immediately stopped. The Moscow Commission worked for several months. Could close the whole topic. But they limited themselves to a reprimand to the chief designer and were allowed to continue working.
On June 22, 1966, a strange cigar-shaped apparatus was launched into the water, which is dragged at night for reasons of secrecy to Kaspiysk. Upon arrival, they hang their wings and prepare them for testing.
On August 14, at four o'clock in the morning, Alekseev sits in the commander's left seat. The ekranoplan flew. Speed - 400, 500 meters. Then the car was spotted by a spy satellite. The best Pentagon analysts did not believe that such a thing could be built. Five years later, Alekseev creates the first combat landing ekranoplan "Eaglet". Three "Eagles" were built.
Then the first rocket ekranoplan "Lun" was created. But Alekseev did not see this already. His ideas were many years ahead of their time. And therefore he remained an unrecognized genius.
