The surviving Lun ekranoplan was built as part of a closely guarded Soviet military program and is one of only two ever completed. As big as it is, its design was preceded by an even larger plane called the KM.
In the mid-1960s, when CIA analysts first saw satellite images of the KM, they knew only that something very large and very fast had appeared on the Caspian Sea. The bewildered analysts dubbed it the "Caspian Sea Monster."
According to a former CIA officer, the agency was so concerned about the discovery it developed an unmanned reconnaissance drone specifically for spying on the KM. The officer, Gene Poteat, and others claim that the government used the Nevada airbase popularly known as Area 51 to design surveillance technology, including the KM drone known as Aquiline.
The official name of the Soviet ship, intelligence officers later learned, was "prototype ship" (abbreviated "KM" from the transliterated Russian). The modest title belied the KM's might. When it first skimmed the waters of the Caspian in 1966, the KM was the largest aircraft on earth. At 295 feet long, capable of flying with a total weight of 600 tons and operating at a cruising speed of 310 miles per hour, it was hardly a mock-up. At a glance the KM looks like it was made to fight Godzilla.
Despite its impressive stats, it was never put into production and in 1980, in an accident described as pilot error, the KM crashed and sank.
All photos: Igor Kolokov
DANCING NEBULA
When the gods dance...
Saturday, June 11, 2011
The Soviet Superplane Program That Rattled Area 51
via wired.com
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