[imagesource: Denis Abramov/Sputnik/AP]

Is it a boat? Is it a plane?

No, it’s a boat/plane.

Why? Ask the folks in Soviet Russia who thought this would be a great idea.

It’s called the Lun-class ekranoplan, affectionately known as “The Caspian Sea Monster”, and it has just emerged for the first time in 30 years.

The Lun could reach speeds of up to 550 km/h, and while my first reaction to the thing was to dismiss it as weird, it is an impressive feat of engineering. We’ll get to that in a minute.

Having remained hidden in the Caspian Sea for the last three decades, it was time for the Lun to reemerge, and the extraction process wasn’t easy.

Over to Robb Report:

The Lun was pulled from the water by three tug boats and two escort vessels. No easy feat considering the superplane weighs 380 tons and has a 148-foot wingspan.

The mammoth effort took a total of 14 hours and required the careful coordination of several vessels, along with the assistance of rubber pontoons…

The giant boat/plane is now sitting on a stretch of coast in the South of Russia like a 380-ton beached whale.

Check it out:

It will be moved, at some point, to a new military museum called Patriot Park.

While it waits around, here’s more on what it could do when it was still operational:

By taking advantage of an aerodynamic principle known as “ground effect,” it could seamlessly glide over water without actually touching it. This is a nifty characteristic of all ekranoplans, a.k.a. ground effect vehicles, which skim the surface of the water at a height of between 3 feet to 16 feet.

This makes them difficult to detect by radar and perfect for seaborne attacks. The mammoth aircraft could even take off and land in tumultuous weather while facing waves of up to 8 feet.

Not bad for a boat/plane?

It’s the only one of its kind, so I’m guessing here.

[source:robbreport]