Tag Archives: ekranoplan

Ekranoplan

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The Soviet Union was a miserable place of oppression, fear, and poverty. Unless you were at the top spreading the aforementioned oppression, fear and poverty, and then it was marvellous. However for all of its ills – and there were many – the Union did create some truly incredible feats of engineering. One of which is this, the amazing ekranoplan.

Well, not this one exactly, but Flickr’s General 尓àvarre has taken Rostislav Alexeyev‘s ingenious design to its ultimate conclusion, with his ‘MARK II Shiryokan Ekranoplan’ pictured here flying a test run over the waters in Bay 57.

Travelling just over the surface of the water below enemy radar, the General’s not-quite-a-plane-not-quite-a-boat is sure to surprise a few enemy mini-figures when they finally see it coming. We suspect their surprise will be brief though, looking at the various weaponry the MARK II is equipped with.

There’s much more to see of General 尓àvarre’s creation at his photostream – click the link above to head to the waters within an alternate Soviet Union.

Googly-Eyed Bastard

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Lego Ekranoplan

Today’s, er… amusingly named creation comes from Tammo S of Flickr, and whilst we’ve used Sci-Fi in the tags, there is more truth in this remarkable design than meets the googly-eye.

Developed by the Soviets during the cold war, Ekranoplan ground effect vehicles occupied a weird space between ship, hovercraft and aircraft, whilst being none of them. The mightiest of these, and one that remained secret from the West for years, was the Lun Class Ekranoplan. It measured over 70m in length and was powered by eight Kuznetsof turbojets producing a combined 28,000lbf of thrust, enabling it to travel at almost 350mph for over 1,000 miles, skimming at just 10ft above the water.

Tammo S’s ground effect vehicle is slightly jazzier than the secret Soviet monster, and looks to be a great way to travel if you’re a LEGO mini-figure! Head over to Flickr via the link above to see more of Tammo’s fictional version of one of the world’s weirdest vehicles.