Naturally, this phenomenon greatly troubled pilots of conventional aircraft. But there were people who realized that this effect of increased aerodynamic lift — called the screen effect — could be used to create a new type of flying vehicle.
Somewhat more promising were hovercraft. The cushion itself is created by fans pumping compressed air under the hull, causing it to rise above the water so that wave resistance disappears entirely. This allows not only tremendous speeds (50–60 knots) but also the ability to come ashore. Read more The screen effect is in essence similar to the hovercraft effect. Only here there is no need for special skirting or pressurizing devices. The cushion — or screen, meaning the zone of elevated pressure beneath the wing — forms on its own when flying at a height of no more than a few meters, preferably over a completely flat surface (water, snow, ice). The longer and wider the wing, the greater the height at which the screen effect can be achieved. The lift-to-drag ratio of ekranoplans is 35–50 (compared to 15–20 for aircraft), which allows for significantly greater payload and range with the same fuel consumption.
A drawback of ekranoplans is the long takeoff run and liftoff speed required (the engines must generate lift equal to the craft's weight to achieve separation from the water and "get on screen"), though in general there are no restrictions on "runway" length on water. Another drawback is that the screen (the underlying surface) must be flat, making flight over land generally impossible. Nevertheless, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
It is generally accepted that the first true ekranoplan was built and tested in 1932 by Finnish engineer Toomas Kaario. The craft, however, was not self-propelled; it was towed by an aerosled. In 1936, Kaario finally tested a self-propelled ekranoplan, which broke apart after traveling only a few meters.
After the Second World War, the Americans and British took an interest in ekranoplans. Several projects were proposed, including completely fantastical ones (such as an ekranoplan aircraft carrier), but none reached practical realization.
The greatest success in the West was achieved by German aircraft designer Alexander Lippisch, who in the 1940s worked for Hitler, participating in the development of the Me 163 jet fighter. After the war he moved to the United States, where he developed several ekranoplan projects. The last of them, the X-114, was adopted by the West German Navy in the 1970s. It was a small five-seat patrol craft (weight — 1.35 tonnes, speed — 150 km/h) that remained a one-of-a-kind vehicle — not only in West Germany, but anywhere outside the USSR.
The USSR proved to be the world leader in ekranoplan development. The first flying model of such a craft was built in 1932 by engineer Pavel Grokhovskiy. The subject was then taken up by the famous "red aristocrat," the Italian Roberto Bartini, who had moved to the USSR in the 1920s for ideological reasons. He attempted to build an ekranoplan with a takeoff weight of 2,500 tonnes. However, that project was never realized.
The principal creator of Soviet ekranoplans was Rostislav Alekseev, who worked at the Nizhny Novgorod (then Gorky) Central Design Bureau for Hydrofoil Vessels. The first flying ekranoplan prototypes were built by him as early as the early 1960s. As often happened in the USSR with fundamentally new technology, an inter-departmental muddle arose: who exactly was supposed to be responsible for it? Since ekranoplans flew almost exclusively over water, landed on it, and took off from it, the Air Force and the Ministry of the Aviation Industry wanted nothing to do with the subject. On the other hand, in 1961, the chairman of the State Committee for Shipbuilding, Boris Butoma, declared: "The shipbuilding industry does not deal with anything that flies higher than a telegraph pole."
Bureaucracy would quite possibly have killed the idea in its infancy, but its savior was Navy Commander-in-Chief Sergey Gorshkov. In the early 1960s he commissioned Alekseev to develop three types of ekranoplans: a transport-and-assault type, an anti-submarine type, and a strike type (for engaging surface ships).
The assault ekranoplans saw the greatest development. The most famous of them was the KM, which officially stood for "korabl-maket" (prototype vessel) but far more commonly was rendered as "Kaspiyskiy Monstr" (Caspian Sea Monster). This enormous craft (at the time the largest flying vehicle in the world, weighing 544 tonnes) was launched in Gorky in June 1966. For nearly a month it was towed down the Volga in a partially disassembled and camouflaged state to Kaspiisk, which became the main base for ekranoplans.
The Americans spotted the KM from space, causing shock across the United States. The 92-meter craft skimmed over the water at a height of 3–4 meters at speeds of up to 500 km/h. Nothing remotely like it existed in the West.
As it turned out, however, we didn't really have it either. The craft proved excessively complex, and a host of problems arose during testing. The fourteen-year KM saga ended very badly in the autumn of 1980: during one of its flights, due to a pilot error, the ekranoplan crashed into the water and sank. And on 9 February of that same year, Rostislav Alekseev died.
More successful was the Project 904 Orlyonok assault ekranoplan. It had a weight of 140 tonnes, a length of 58 m, a speed of 400 km/h, a payload of 20 tonnes, and could carry a company of marines or 2 IFVs/APCs. Between 1979 and 1983, three such craft were commissioned into the Caspian Flotilla. Only one has survived to the present day — as a museum exhibit opposite the Northern River Terminal in Moscow. Another was destroyed in an accident; the third was decommissioned.
Finally, in the late 1980s, the sole Project 903 Lun strike ekranoplan (400 tonnes, 73 m, 500 km/h) was commissioned into the same Caspian Flotilla. It carried six supersonic anti-ship missiles (ASMs) of the Moskit type, meaning its firepower was nearly on a par with a Project 956 destroyer. A second identical craft was converted to a rescue variant, but it could not be completed before the collapse of the USSR. As a result, today we have one museum-piece Orlyonok, one unfinished Spasatel (Rescuer), and one Lun with no targets on the Caspian. Alekseev's Central Design Bureau for Hydrofoil Vessels in Nizhny Novgorod has also been largely rendered ineffective.
The reason ekranoplans met such a sorry fate was, of course, the post-Soviet lack of funds, as well as the operational difficulties associated with this highly unusual technology. It should also be noted that while the USSR Navy command seemingly recognized the ekranoplans' very high capabilities correctly, it did not fully understand how to use them most effectively. For the assault and strike variants are somewhat questionable.
It must be understood that an ekranoplan is rather large and at the same time possesses no self-defense weapons whatsoever. As a result, its combat survivability is low, and it is therefore unlikely to be suitable as a means of landing the first assault wave or as a carrier of anti-ship missiles. In both roles its chances of survival are slim: during an amphibious landing it can be shot down even by an anti-tank guided missile or an RPG, to say nothing of any artillery. And a strike ekranoplan can be destroyed by the enemy with either a surface-to-air missile or an anti-ship missile, since it has no means of fighting back.
On the other hand, a size and payload capacity far greater than an aircraft's, combined with high speed and the ability to land on water, give the ekranoplan extremely valuable qualities for other roles.
First, there is, of course, amphibious assault — only not the first wave, but the second and subsequent ones. The initial storming of the shore is still better conducted by traditional means, but ekranoplans are an ideal vehicle for the rapid transfer of substantial reinforcements (both troops and equipment) to an already-secured beachhead. In the context of our own conditions, ekranoplans could become a crucial means of moving troops from the mainland to Far Eastern territories with no overland connections (Sakhalin, the Kurils, Kamchatka).
The fact is that moving reinforcements to the Kaliningrad or Sakhalin regions is a serious combat operation requiring reliable air and sea cover from Mistral-class ships. Neither the Baltic Fleet nor, especially, the Pacific Fleet can provide this today. This applies above all to the Pacific Fleet, whose surface forces (split, moreover, between Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky) simply cannot match either the US Pacific Fleet or the navies of Japan and China. Consequently, the Mistrals would simply be pointlessly destroyed along with the troops aboard them. Read more Second, the ekranoplan is an excellent anti-submarine platform, since it can land on water and take on board a large variety of anti-submarine weapons and detection equipment. The USSR apparently recognized this, yet an anti-submarine ekranoplan never materialized.
In addition, non-acoustic methods are also used to detect submarines. For example, a submarine can be sought out by the magnetic field it generates — or even by its gravitational signature. These methods, however, require the use of very complex and precise instrumentation. Read more Third, the ekranoplan is an ideal rescue vehicle — commentary is probably unnecessary here. This too seems to have been understood, but, as noted above, the sole Spasatel was never completed.
Finally, the ekranoplan could serve as an excellent replacement for supply vessels. The operations of surface ship squadrons in the ocean are impossible without a "floating rear," which, however, is a heavy burden: it sharply reduces the formation's speed and ties up forces for its protection. An ekranoplan, by contrast, can deliver virtually any consumables directly from the home base and return there immediately, thus eliminating all logistical problems.
True, our surface ship squadrons now put to sea so rarely that the event becomes the leading story in the Mass Media. And within such "squadrons," the number of actual warships very seldom exceeds two. Creating ekranoplan supply ships for this purpose is, of course, pointless.
The oceans protect the United States from external invasion, but they also create a problem of distances. Most potential theaters of operations for the US Armed Forces today are in Asia — on the opposite side of the globe from the United States itself. Accordingly, moving and deploying large troop formations takes considerable time and requires very serious expenditure. Read more This is why others have now taken up ekranoplans. The Americans, for whom strategic mobility is of paramount importance, are developing a craft called the Pelican, capable of transporting up to 1,300 tonnes of cargo (for example, 17 Abrams tanks) over 12,000 km at a cruising speed of 460 km/h. The Pelican will be 122 m long with a wingspan of 152 m and a maximum takeoff weight of 2,700 tonnes. It is expected to be able to take off not only from water but also from land, for which purpose it will have 38 pairs of landing gear. In addition, the Pelican will be able to fly for a time as a conventional aircraft at altitudes of up to 6,000 m. Of course, the Pelican's payload is less than that of a cargo ship, but it is several times greater than that of the heaviest aircraft, its speed is only marginally lower than an aircraft's, and it is an order of magnitude faster than a ship.
And naturally, China is working very actively on ekranoplans and plans to build no fewer than 200 ekranoplans of various sizes by 2017. The first small ekranoplans were being built in China as far back as the late 1980s, but they remained at the experimental prototype stage. Since then, Chinese science and technology have advanced enormously, and — most importantly — access to our technologies has improved significantly. There is therefore no reason to doubt China's prospects in this area.