Here we go again.

The Russians have had big cannons and big trains. Neither of which worked a damn, or at all. So I am not surprised that they built and tested an ekranoplan, or Ground Effects Vehicle. In simpler terms it's a huge plane with stubby wings that flies about 20 feet off the water at high speed.

I may not have the engineering down, but Russian scientists discovered that airplane wings had peculiar lift qualities at very low altitudes. In fact they discovered that wings can lift more at low altitude because air is trapped between the surface and the wings. And, here comes that love of real big dangerous machines again, the bigger the wing, the bigger the lift.

Russian aviators, like their engineering cousins of yore created a craft that was over 100 metres long, 40 metres wide and powered by 10 jet engines. Take that down to your Town Pantry Chevron for a fill up and scrape the bugs off the windshield. Not surprisingly when mortals tinker with big and loud they get hurt. One of the babies crashed in the early 80's as a result of NOT ENOUGH POWER to safely lift it off the surface of the water.

The Americans, never one to miss a chance at jumping at quality intelliegence, dubbed the soviet ekranoplan, when having been scratching their heads over what they were looking at in U2 photographs, the Caspian Sea Monster.