The ekranoplan flying boat: Russia's 'Caspian Sea Monster' | Focus on Europe

A gigantic flying boat from Soviet times could bring tourists flocking to the Caspian Sea. Even if the 'monster' no longer flies, it is still very impressive.

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[pasupaty]

Damn this is serious technology seeing that it was built 50 years ago

[kingnamcy]

You can see that he is so passionate because of his disappointment that it never went on full production

[philoctetes_wordsworth]

Wow. Such an interesting machine. I am a little surprised that vlad hasn’t made a museum of it. He has great emotional attachment to the glory days of the USSR.

[RifullOfTheWest]

I wish this great craft would be 100% fully restored to flight condition. It is a unique piece of history.

[tubester]

Bald and Bankrupt introduced me to this mammoth piece of technology few months back. Now DW gave me an inside tour!

[pyroromancer]

im sad we live in a world where much of cutting edge research can only exist because of military applications.

[wllee]

That's just the Lun class Ekranoplan. The ACTUAL Caspian Sea Monster is still sunk at the bottom of the Caspian Sea due to a crash caused by pilot error, though its basis was used for the Lun class we see here.

[sagarpuri]

Soviet Russia will always be remembered as a legendary military power.

[Johnvalkyre]

Its impressive after all this years the interiors are still intact

[songangte]

This needs to be preserved in a museum

[sudiptakiran]

Wow!! Didn't expect the cockpit to be so well preserved even after so many decades!!

[chaosland]

Now it's like a sleeping monster.

[AdityaSingh-xrcn]

When Soviet Premier Nikhita Khrushchev talked about the USSR having ships which could "jump bridges". The West was baffled, since this was also during the height of the Cold War. It turned out, this beast was what he was talking about.

[rext]

If it's crazy then it's Soviet - the greatest machines ever built including the AN-225.

[radisfatrotar]

The ekranoplans big disadvantage was its dependancy on smooth weather conditions

[dimi_sf]

This plans looks like those invading DC, NYC, and SF in Res Alert 😂😂 they only need to add “Kirov reporting” lol

[ocln]

This is actually a Lun class ekranoplan. The caspian sea monster was larger and to a different design.

[speedstriker]

Why hasn't Russia put this in a museum yet?

[darkv]

First time I saw anything about this mysterious and very interesting aircraft was at least a decade ago... clearly much younger than the day of his existence still impresses me even now and will still impress me!!! I'm surprised the competent authorities are letting such grandiose and clever creations rot and, as I heard from the former operator, they're going to end up in the scrap metal!!! It's really inconceivable...

[mimovil]

Check out BALD AND BANKRUPT's clip on this.