The Strangest Aircraft Ever Built: The Soviet Union's VVA-14

As an aircraft designer, physicist, astronomer, philosopher, painter and musician, Robert Bartini is often described as a genius ahead of his time. Throughout his life, he designed over 60 aircraft and made significant contributions to Soviet aviation. Although most of Bartini’s aircraft designs never left the drawing board, many of his aeronautical innovations were incorporated into production aircraft.

In 1965, Bartini was given a rare opportunity to realize the full potential of one of his concepts. With the emergence of American Polaris missile submarines, the Soviet Union needed a new kind of aircraft to respond. Bartini proposed building the ultimate submarine hunter. Designated as the VVA-14, it would be a truly unique and innovative aircraft. With a catamaran-like fuselage it would be optimized to fly within the ground effect (like other ekranoplan of the era), giving it endurance needed to fly long-range missions. It would also have wings so that it could fly like a conventional airplane if needed. Bartini would equip the VVA-14 with both a conventional landing gear for runways and a unique inflatable pontoon system to give it amphibious capabilities. Ten lift jets would allow for vertical take-off and landings (VTOL) from any kind of surface, giving the aircraft the ability to operate from the even most harsh and remote regions of the Soviet Union. Development would stretch nearly a decade, but like Bartini himself, the VVA-14’s design would end up being a little too ahead of it's time.

Select footage courtesy the AP Archive


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[scotlandghost]

"Designed 50 years ago by an eccentric visionary..."
The opening when describing everything awesome ever.

[CakeAcquired]

quietly flexing on everyone with his beautiful renders

[normtrooper]

Bartini was born in 1897 and he produced technology that would not seem out of place in 2097. What an engineer

[hallquiche]

Man, the cold war is fascinating. The technologies invented during those times are just batshit crazy. There was Eraknoplans, the SR-71, Space Shuttles, attempts at supersonic bombers Just a competition of showing off between two superpowers.

[RealEngineering]

Can't fool me. That's clearly a spaceship from Star Wars.

[andie_pants]

This is by far the most Soviet thing I've ever seen. Gotta hand it to them, they weren't afraid to think outside the box and try some truly, brilliantly, insane shit.

[jedison]

Gotta admit, that design looks cool AF.

This is one of those designs that was too far ahead of it's time. An aircraft like this would be much easier to engineer today with modern techniques and materials.

[thebigbaiter]

My mother used to work on the plant where this prototype was built and tested back in the days. In early 90s when USSR fell apart people were struggling to survive. Parents didn't see salaries for months and amounts, when paid, were nothing but a joke. So plant management gave some of the territory neighbouring the plan'ts take-off stirp to employees, so they can grow potatoes and a like to help them to survive. As a kid I was helping out my parents in this "orchard" and was able to see some TU-95 (Bears) come and go for maintenance in about 500 meters from our potatoes plantation :). But the most significant was to observe the remains of this craft - cabin and hull, no wings. They were lying not so far and my kid's imagination draw some parallels with Star Wars Falcon remains. I recall I was able to stair on this craft forever untill my mother call me back to work.

[optillian]

"I am limited by the technology of my time."
-Bartini, probably

[AriElMinistry]

I love how the Soviets were all about function over form, yet they inadvertently end up making some of the most aesthetic and unique designs ever.

[texarkana]

Bartini was probably the most underrated and underappreciated designer in history

[captain_commenter]

Quality over quantity= Mustard

And that is good

[captionmissilec.]

The Soviet’s literally said fuck it to everything, Beautiful

[L_U-K_E]

7:33 damn this shot never gets old. Looks amazing every time i see it.

[redoneteron]

Not only are these concepts revolutionary, they look awesome as heck. I *absolutely* think spaceships built with those two designs (& sci-fi materials ofc) would excel for their in-atmosphere traversal, cargo hold, weapons capability, and fuel/power efficiency. Even if they might suffer in terms of raw acceleration, top speed and turning capability, it still makes for an excellent hauler/heavy gunship.

[mnmwogu]

I feel like this design should be revisited with more modern technology

[dfreak]

The gigantic flying aircraft carrier version, is a kind of machine which could perfectly fit on a James Bond movie as the villain's mobile fortress.

[mirage]

"A 5000 ton flying aircraft carrier."

An idea that sounds like madness, even with today's technology and this madman of an engineer had it all figured out back in the 60s and 70s! One has to stop and imagine just what he would come up combining his ground effect theory with another 50 or so years of technological advancements. I can imagine NASA or ESA transporting entire rocket ships from factories on one continent to a suitable launch site on the other side of the globe in record time. A shame his vision never came to fruition.

[AeYronu]

Бартини, Бериев, Алексеев три лучших конструктора в гидроавиации, но каждый из них был гением в своем направлении. А так как в общем тема была одна, то многое их проекты схожи и перекликаются. Да и совместных проектов у них не мало.

[MajorOutage]

And here I thought "normal" Ekranoplans were the peak of Soviet engineering awesomeness....