#groundeffectplane

Not many Ekranoplan looking craft in this batch

..

The Soviet Ekranoplan (Russian for ground-effect plane) was a strange half-ship, half-plane craft that made many promises but wasn't very good at keeping them. In the mid-1950s Robert Bartini became involved in designing ground-effect vehicles.

His last known project was the Bartini Beriev VVA-14, an experimental ekranoplan featuring vertical takeoff and was intended to be used in anti-submarine warfare against American Submarines. There were many design hurdles along the way when developing the VVA-14 and but before they could be overcome Robert Bartini died in 1974 at age 72 and the VVA-14 was cancelled

One of Bartini's more incredible designs was an enormous flying aircraft carrier. The proposed 5,000 ton ground effect vehicle would be large enough to carry 15 to 25 aircraft. This project also died with Bartini in 1974

I've been interested in these designs and used the images to try to get similar more futuristic designs. Most of the early results were not very close to my goal but were interesting.