Quote:
Originally posted by Mr. Pockets
The first clue that it was Soviet was the placement (and number  ) of the engines. Nobody else I know of ever put their engines high up on nacelles forward of the wings. Weird.
It seems to me that flying full-time in ground effect would be a tricky thing to do. I realize that the thing is almost riding on a 'cushion' of air like a hovercraft - but how careful do you have to be turning it???
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I think it was designed as a point it and run kind of thing. I have a photo of another version of the thing. The engines were mounted high to prevent them from ingesting water. I'm sure that would be a bad scene. In one of the articles I read about the beast it reported that at least one had "broken up". As for the turning I think the "bird" had some sort of riggers under it that were probably useful at slow speeds. At high speed the thing probably needed all sorts of room. I think their goal in the program was to allow for a rapidly moving target for American missiles. I can only imagine what kind of noise it generated