For interested people, there's something the West once referred to as the Caspian Sea Monster. There's a couple of good documentaries that mention it.
Never heard of that one. I need to look into it. Thanks.
A crazy Russian loved GEVs. Pilots originally noticed the extra lift when they started to land.
The crazy Russian seriously loved GEVs. He was a GEV building fool. He convinced the USSR (Stalin, I think) that GEVs were awesome. It might have been Khrushchev.
Either way, by the time the next Soviet Premier came along (either Khruschev or Brezhnev) he'd built these giant fucking GEVs, having realized the optimal wing size was huge.
They even figured they could fly one under the Golden Gate Bridge and use it to drop stuff on us - but mostly dropping troops.
Before this absurd program was canceled, the crazy Russian built a giant fucking GEV.
A spy plane saw it.
Sane people were fucking baffled and had no idea what the hell it was. They're obviously not crazy Russians.
The spy people called it "Caspian Sea Monster."
I'm pretty sure the spy people had no idea what the hell it was until after the fall of Russia. I don't remember if they'd identified it and I don't think it ever had a NATO name. I dunno - I'm not gonna go look this up!
To this day, the crazy Russian's daughter laments the world's lack of giant GEVs. He kept on with his GEV mission, such as he could. Without funding, and being the Soviet Union, that was not much and his program eventually shut down. He spent pretty much the rest of his life extolling the virtues of the giant GEVs and was pretty sure they were the best idea in the history of best ideas.
See? I'll save ya some time!
(post is archived)