A-90 Orlyonok - History

History

The Soviet Navy command of the 1960s was very interested in a fast military transport capable of carrying a large payload. The Central Hydrofoil Design Bureau was one of the organizations working on this top secret project, about which little was known until the fall of the Soviet Union.

Chief Designer R.E. Alexeev designed several prototypes in the 1960s. At the start of the 1970s, Alexeev designed a medium-sized Ekranoplan to be used as a military transport. The new vehicle was named "Orlyonok" ("Eaglet"). The first flying unit (S-23) was initially tested on the Volga River in the autumn of 1972, and the next year dismantled and transported to the Caspian Sea for continued testing. In 1975 the S-23 crashed during testing, later proved to be due to a deficiency in the alloy used for the hull. A different alloy was used in all subsequent units built.

Read more about this topic:  A-90 Orlyonok

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.
    Karl Marx (1818–1883)

    The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.
    Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)