Igor Gennadyevich Dobrovolsky (born July 21, 1956) is a test pilot and Honored Worker of the Central Design Bureau for Hydrofoil Ships named after R. E. Alexeyev, and the lead Ekranoplan Lun — the largest surviving aircraft of its class. A representative of a flying dynasty, he has lived in Sormovo (disambiguation) since 1981 [1].
Family and Education
Dobrovolsky's father was a naval aviator who served in the Baltic. During the mass military aviation cuts of the 1960s, he was demobilized and moved to Gorky, where he subsequently headed the Gorky Aeroclub in Bogorodsk [1].
Igor Dobrovolsky made his first solo flight on June 7, 1972, in a Yak-18A; his own father, as head of the aeroclub, signed off on him. By the age of sixteen he had finished school, already having accumulated significant flight hours [1].
He enrolled at the Volchanskoe Flight School, which accepted him on the condition that he begin training upon turning eighteen; his solo flight in the jet-powered L-29 took place when he was seventeen. At twenty he graduated as a flight instructor on jet aircraft and trained cadets — first at an aviation center, then at the aeroclub in Bogorodsk [1].
Work on Ekranoplans
In 1981, Dobrovolsky was taken on as a test pilot at the Central Design Bureau for Hydrofoil Vessels, to work on ekranoplans. Rostislav Alekseev had died by that point, and the work was carried out under the direction of Vladimir Kirillovykh, chief designer of the Lun strike missile-carrying ekranoplan. Dobrovolsky's father had been one of Alekseev's first pilots, working there several years earlier [1].
He became the lead test pilot of the Lun — a craft with a takeoff weight of 380 tonnes [1].
By the time an article about him appeared in the factory newspaper in 2021, Dobrovolsky had logged 6,500 flight hours and completed 319 parachute jumps [1].
Testing the Lun
Dobrovolsky tested the Lun from virtually its first flight to its last [1].
During the world's first missile launch from the Lun, the commander of the Caspian Flotilla, Vladimir Yefimovich Lyashenko, was on board; the target was hit on the first pass. In commemoration, Lyashenko gave the pilot his watch and ordered an inscription engraved on it [1].
Flying one meter above the water at a total weight of 400 tonnes — it's sheer fantasy.
The Caspian Demonstration and End of Operations
The test base of the Central Design Bureau for Hydrofoil Vessels was located in Kaspiysk. In 1993, a demonstration of Soviet ekranoplans was held there for a foreign delegation: the crew flew the Orlyonok (ekranoplan), a 140-tonne craft with a wave-height limit of one and a half meters, while the sea was running a storm with waves of around two and a half meters. The flight was completed in full — with takeoff, transit, and landing [1].
Dobrovolsky's last flight at the Central Design Bureau took place on November 14, 2009, when a small ekranoplan was being tested in Priozersk. After that, the bureau ceased operations. He concluded his work at the bureau as commander of the flight test squadron [1].
The Lun itself sat in a dock for more than a quarter of a century before being towed to Derbent to be placed on a permanent display plinth [1].
Sources
- biblmr.r52.ru — Krasny Sormovich — Your People, Sormovo: Test Pilot Igor Dobrovolsky