It was the creation of the "flying ship" that the princess sang about. The ship's underwater wing is shaped like an airplane wing. Its lower part is even, the upper one has a convex surface. Water flows around the wing from below and from above, but the speed of these two streams is different, therefore, a certain rarefaction of the water mass is created under the wing, and the water pressure from below forms a powerful lifting force.
The designers have determined a strict dependence of the lift force on the speed of the ship. This was a very important discovery. The speed itself became the regulator of the lift of the wings. A certain speed made it possible for the ship not to dive deeply and not jump out of the water, but, as it were, fly along an invisibly drawn line.
The shape of the wings, the depth of their immersion in the water, the angle of inclination, or, as the designers say, "the angle of attack of the wings" - all this determined the stable flight of the ship.
Only after conducting dozens of experiments, the designers found the optimal solution, the only correct ratio of the shape, speed and angle of attack of the wings, which was necessary for the "Rocket".
When something completely new is created, difficulties and unresolved technical problems lie in wait at literally every step. In the experimental workshop, they became convinced of this very quickly.
The appearance of a winged ship! Raise an ordinary ship out of the water and you will be amazed at its ridiculous appearance. The hull of the "Rocket" was all out of the water, for this new movement it was necessary to find new architectural forms.
During the flight, the Rocket's body did not touch the water, but the high speed generated air resistance. The ship was supposed to be as streamlined as possible. For a long time they could not find the necessary sharp-chine lines of the bow of the ship in the experimental shop.
But the control room brought a special torment. If this were possible, the designers would have removed the wheelhouse from the deck altogether, hid it in the body of the ship, as is done in airplanes. How much metal was spent making ten variants of this cabin. And every time it seemed to the designers that the wheelhouse on the upper deck did not "fit" well into the general impetuous contour of the "Rocket".
The riveted duralumin hull of the ship demanded a particularly careful finishing - the slightest scratch or dent on the lead ship was considered a marriage. When the hull was already ready, the engine was delivered to the workshop, it was to be finished. Many failures with winged motor ships in the past were explained, among other things, by the fact that then there were no engines that, with high power, would have a relatively light weight.
A winged ship and a bulky steam engine are incompatible things.
The work went on in three shifts. In early May, it was decided to launch the Raketa for the first time. The ship was still without a wheelhouse, not completed, but it was important to check its basic seaworthiness.
Only recently did ice pass on the Volga, and the flood came to the coast of the Sormovsky backwater. When the locomotive pulled the Raketa on the platform to the very shore, its wheels went into the water. The water splashed even at the foot of the tower cranes, which were supposed to transfer the ship to the water.
I had to drive a floating crane to the shore, he lifted the ship into the air, sailed a little, and only then the "Raketa" found herself on the Volga. It turned out to be a troublesome business, and only in the evening the tired, drenched shipbuilders climbed onto the deck of the "Rocket", according to the ancient custom, breaking a bottle of champagne on its wing.
However, the very first run of the vessel alerted the designers. The "rocket" moved uncertainly through the water, its wings were too close to the surface, the ship was shaking on a shallow wave.
The angle of attack of the wings! That's what it was. Attack angle! Determining it, the designers have done hundreds of experiments with the models. But on the first test of a full-scale vessel, it turned out that the angle of attack is large, and more than necessary, the lifting force of the wings.
Again, the floating one lifted the ship above the water and carried it to the railway platform. Now it was necessary to remove the wings in the shop, reduce the angle of attack and do it with such care and precision so as not to be mistaken not only in the degrees of the angle, but also in minutes.
On July 26, early in the morning, "Raketa" again left the factory backwater, so that on the same day, fifteen hours later, to approach the landing stage of the Khimki river station in Moscow. Even the fastest river express trains traveled 900 kilometers from Gorky to Moscow in just three days.
The Raketa flew up to Gorodets so quickly that they did not have time to prepare the lock, and the ship had to sail for twenty minutes near the hydroelectric station, until the lock gates rose, opening the road.
Then the ship went out into the vastness of an artificial reservoir. Gathering speed, he rose on the wings, and the first captain of the vessel, Viktor Poluektov, headed for Moscow.
After fourteen sailing hours, an hour earlier than expected, the Raketa arrived in the Moscow Sea, but it was already late, and therefore the ship stopped overnight in Khlebnikov, in order to appear early in the morning for a solemn meeting at the Khimki railway station.
The first day of Raketa's stay in Moscow turned into an unusual and unforgettable holiday. First, there was a big meeting in the river port, the minister of the river fleet, Alekseev, and designers spoke. Then the participants of the rally and among them many foreign guests of the VI World Festival of Youth and Students wanted to ride a winged ship.
The desire of the guests of the "Raketa" was so great that for the first time the ship departed heavily overloaded. There were about a hundred people on board. Even the militiamen, caught up in general enthusiasm, forgot about their duties and jumped on the deck of the ship.
But all the same "Rocket" came out on the wings. For almost half a day, she flew around the Khimki reservoir. One delegation of festival guests replaced another on board. All of them came to the indescribable delight of traveling on a winged motor ship, congratulated the creators of this ship, filmed with them on the deck.
The next day, the ship sailed along the Moskva River past the Kremlin. Poluektov tried to navigate the ship with the utmost caution: boats, river trams, boats scurrying to and fro along the river blocked the Raketa's path. And yet the ship flew swiftly past the park of culture and recreation, Neskuchny Garden, past the high granite banks of the embankment.
Some motorcyclist, as it turned out later, a foreign journalist, was rushing on his motorcycle along the embankment, trying to catch up with the "Raketa", but did not catch her.
From the deck of the ship it was clearly visible how people, amazed by the appearance of the unusual ship, rose from their chairs, many jumped on tables, ran to the parapet of the stadium embankment, past which the Raketa glided easily and smoothly.
The success inspired the creators and the management. As soon as the "Raketa" came from Moscow to its native harbor, the United Volga Shipping Company announced regular passenger flights of a cruise ship on the Gorky - Kazan line. A new stage of testing began. For two and a half months remaining before the end of navigation, the designers wanted to test the "Raketa" in normal operation, check the ship sailing through the stormy, autumn, often almost stormy Kuibyshev reservoir.
On the first voyage from the Gorky pier, the ship departed at dawn, at four in the morning. In the wheelhouse next to Poluektov was the Hero of the Soviet Union Mikhail Petrovich Devyatayev - the captain of river ships, during the Great Patriotic War, a combat pilot who became famous for his heroic escape from Nazi captivity on an aircraft captured from the enemy.
From time to time, Devyatayev replaced Poluektov at the helm, he learned to operate a new ship. This time there were several designers and Rostislav Evgenievich Alekseev on board the ship.
The train from Gorky to Kazan then went for about a day. The "rocket" appeared in the Kazan port at half past one in the morning, having covered all the way in 6 hours and 45 minutes.
On this day, on the Kuibyshev reservoir, the waves reached a height of one meter and a quarter, the excitement was equal to five points. But the stormy Volga did not slow down the ship's progress. "Rocket" rushed at a given speed, only slightly swaying on the waves, not as ships usually sway, but only from side to side.
Thus began regular flights from Gorky to Kazan. The fact that passengers could travel from Gorky to Kazan and return back in one day seemed surprising. This changed the usual idea of slow-moving water transport around the world.
With each new flight, the designers became more and more convinced of the practicality of the "Rocket". The test program also included sailing in a clogged river channel. They meant logs, boards, and all kinds of rubbish on the river that were often detached from the rafts. At first, the so-called "drowned", heavy logs barely noticeable under water, which float almost vertically, seemed especially dangerous.
- What will happen to your duralumin "Rocket", with its wings, if at high speed it unexpectedly runs into such a driftwood? - A year ago, Alekseev was asked by people to whom light winged ships seemed fragile and unreliable.
“We’ll sail along the Volga - we’ll see,” Alekseev answered in such cases.
The meeting with the snake took place on one of the first flights. When the "Rocket" at full speed hit its wings on a large half-sunken log, Alekseev and the captain, who were at that time on the deck of the ship, turned pale with excitement. Calculations by calculations, after all, there are all sorts of surprises, what if a log will ram a light, like an airplane, the hull of a river ship?
However, the passengers on the ship did not even feel the shaking of the hull. Steel wings, like sharp knives, instantly cut the log, and only large chips accidentally fell under the propeller and slightly bent its blades.
The last days of navigation have arrived. The "rocket" was already sailing without passengers from Gorky to the Kuibyshev reservoir, where, according to the forecast bureau, great excitement was expected. Alekseev wanted to test the ship in the harshest stormy weather. But when the ship approached Kazan, it got very cold, and freezing began on Volya. There was no way to move on. "Salo" was going along the river. Areas of solid ice have already formed near the coast. There was a real danger - to find yourself in ice captivity.
But the Raketa could not winter in Kazan, far from the Sormovsky backwater. But a winged ship is not an icebreaker. What happens to its hull if the ship starts to break through the ice fields? Alekseev and Poluektov, all the designers who were on board at that time, consulted anxiously whether they had the right to expose their first winged ship to such a risk. However, they did not have time to think either; they had to decide immediately, before the situation on the river worsened.
Alekseev made a decision: to return to Gorky. We left Kazan at night. It was dark on the river, deserted, only here and there lights were burning, showing the fairway.
Soon it started to snow, it got even darker. Then fog appeared.
In such difficult conditions began the flight of the "Rocket" along the almost frozen river - seven hours of continuous excitement and tremendous tension in an unusual campaign, which could only be decided by a winged ship.
If the Rocket sat deep in the water, the ice floes would surely have damaged its hull. But the wings lifted the body of the ship into the air and instantly cut large pieces of ice themselves. The fine ice whistled through the entire ship, clanking against the strong glass of the cabin windows, on the duralumin paneling of the deck, and it seemed that an ice blizzard was raging over the winged ship.
Halfway through the ice, the water intake was clogged, but there is a silver lining: now the designers have learned how it needs to be redone so that no freeze-up is caught by surprise.
All in long icicles hanging along the sides, frosty, as if turned gray during this difficult ice passage, the Raketa safely returned to Gorky to winter on the bank of the factory backwater.
Behind the "Rocket" Alekseev began to create the "Meteor". The new ship "Meteor" was laid down at the stands in January 1959. By the end of the year, he was ready. The assembly went quickly.
The winged ship, which seemed fantastic a few years ago, now did not surprise anyone, becoming the same familiar detail of the factory landscape as tugs, boats, motor ships.
And then "Sputnik", "Voskhod", "Burevestnik", "Kometa" appeared, which were already surfing the sea.
But few people know that the design bureau of Alekseev was actively developing military options - for example, ekranoplanes "Lun" and "Orlyonok", which, in fact, open a new era in traditional aviation and naval systems.
It is known that three ekranoplanes of the "Eaglet" type were created for the needs of the Navy. The new Defense Minister Sergei Sokolov in 1984 considered these projects unpromising. But the general designer Alekseev will never know about this: during the tests of the passenger version of the ekranoplan, he will be under the weight of his brainchild. No one really from his designer could tell how Alekseev fell under the ekranoplan. He will get to the end of the tests, and the next day he will complain of severe pain in the stomach. On the second day Alekseev lost consciousness. The doctors said that he overstrained. Peritonitis began. It was not possible to save the ingenious designer.
