Ekranoplanes were invented by the Soviet Union engineer Rastislav Alexeev. They were created during Cold War, to serve as fast moving strategic “aircrafts” and were based on Caspian as well as Black Sea. These ekranoplanes could fly only meters off the ground, but had an advantage of flying fast under the radars (up to 550km/h on MD-160), carrying heavy loads as well as missiles. The “Caspian Sea Monster” also went into the history for being able to lift and fly 544 tons of dry weight, which is more weight than the biggest airplane in the world AN-225 can fly with…
“Lun” with 6 anti-ship missiles…
Even though this video is in Russian, it’s still worth watching since it shows you the rare archive videos of these birds in action…
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We’ve already told you about the new “Sukhoi Superjet 100 Regional Jet”. This plane had made it’s first flight in Komsomolks-na_Amure (eastern part of Russia) on May 19th, 2008. Who knows maybe these will be flying all over the world soon, just like the Brazilian Embraer-190, since the starting prices ($27 million) of these two birds are actually similar…
- here is how Superjet was created…
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We have already shown you the extensive collection of “Soviet Union Cars Part 1” and Part 2, as well as the showing you what the “Soviet Union Government Cars” had looked like, now it’s the turn of mighty cabriolets. Naturally people wouldn’t assume that Soviet Union with it’s harsh climate would even need to have a cabriolet, but nevertheless USSR had made quite a few interesting cabriolet designs, and here they are…
GAZ-14 Seagull Cabriolet
We have already shown you “Bird’s Eye Look at Moscow“, now here are some incredibly beautiful pictures from the top of a Moscow apartment building, which is the highest apartment building in Europe, the building’s height is 261 meters, and the pictures you see here were taken from 240…
Recently the news had surfaced that a Swiss pilot Yves Rossy a.k.a. “Fusion Man” had flown over the Alps using his jet powered wing. That’s all nice and everything, especially knowing that back in 1935 a Soviet engineer Mr. Sanfirov had himself designed and then tested his wing while parachuting out of an airplane, except that his wing didn’t cost $285,000 to build…
We have already shown you the old Soviet Locomotives, now here are few picture of one those timeless classics with a nice background view of modern Moscow…
Here are the pictures of Joseph Stalin’s Bunker that was built in the 1930s. This bunker is 50 meters below ground, and is located 17km away from Kremlin. The bunker is connected to Kremlin via the underground passages. During the WW2 Stalin often found himself living in this bunker, and undoubtedly that’s where a lot of important decisions were made…
This is a very interesting video about experimental tanks that the former USSR was building. Swimming tanks, tanks with turbojets in the back, hovercraft tanks, certainly not many people ever knew about these projects, and even less had a chance to see those tanks in action. Even if you don’t understand Russian this video is still worth watching…
We’ve already shown you pictures of the 15th Anniversary of “Russian Knights” aviation display team. Here is the video of the “Russian Knights” showing one of their spectacular performances. Below we are also including the video of “VFTC Aerobatics Team” from Moscow who fly using Microsoft Flight Simulator…
P.S. The only sad part here is that the government pay so little money to those one of a kind aces whose job it is to the represent Russian Aviation on a world’s stage, that all of those pilots you’ve seen in the first video, would actually get paid more if they worked for the local Russian airlines…
Obviously it took a while before Russian president began to be driven around in his secure Mercedes-Benz S600 Pullman. Take a look at this gallery to see the somewhat chronological transition between the Russian and Soviet government cars…
We have already shown you pictures from a Moscow Aviation Museum at night, now here are pictures from the Aviation museum near Ulyanovsk, Russia. These pictures were taken and sent in to us by a tourist from the Netherlands who had visited the museum. The most notable aircraft on display in that museum, is obviously the Tupolev-144 Supersonic jet, the one that made its first flight 3 months before Concorde…
Here are pictures of old Russian locomotives from the Soviet Union era, as well as people who operate them today. These rare trains are usually used during May 9th Victory celebrations and give rides to the veterans. The pictures are taken between 2004-2007, enjoy…
Here are the pictures, as well as a (Russian) video of World’s largest military hovercraft, called Zubr (bison). The Zubr air-cushion landing craft is intended to carry out over-the-beach landings of amphibious landing troops and combat vehicles, as well as provide fire support of their actions on shore.
The ship provides sea lift of materiel consisting of:
- 3 tanks of total mass up to 150 tons;
- or 10 armored vehicles of total mass up to 131 tons;
- or 8 armored personnel carriers of total mass up to 115 tons;
- or 8 amphibious tanks.
To accommodate troops, carried in vehicles there are 4 compartments with 140 seats.
As an option, the combat material compartment can be fitted with removable benches for additional accommodation of 360 troops (altogether 500 persons).
