Aircraft geeks: check this thing out

[cavehamster]

I have no idea what it says, though I am told it is some kind of Russian ground effect plane, but man... love the photos:

http://igor113.livejournal.com/51213.html

I'd really like to spend some time with the designers and a translator to see what it was that went through their heads to end up with such a beast.  I was a bit disappointed that there was only one interior shot

I really like old aircraft for some reason...

[PeregrineBF]

It's the Lun-class Ekranoplan. Ground-effect vehicle, 1000 ton capacity, 550km/h. The missile launchers on the back are for P-270s, nice little nuclear-tipped anti-ship cruise missiles.

[Requia ☣]

Tandem wings 

As for what was going through the designers heads, it was probably a defense against torpedoes.

[PeregrineBF]

No, it's a fast-moving heavy-lift platform. It can get 6 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles from one end of the Black Sea to the other in a little over two hours. It can carry over 700 tons of payload (30-tons or so in the nukes). There's no way a non-ground-effect aircraft could lift anywhere near that much.

Speed record for a water craft: "In 1978, Kenneth Peter Warby achieved a world's water-speed record of 552.8 km/h in New South Wales, Australia, in his hydroplane, the Spirit of Australia."

The AN-225 can lift 640,000kg (max takeoff weight). The Lun lifts 900,000kg or so. The AN-225 does, however, have a top speed of 850km/h and more than double the range.