Rostislav Alekseev (Rostislav Yevgenyevich Alekseev, Ростислав Евгеньевич Алексеев, also spelled Alexeyev or Alekseyev; 18 December 1916 – 9 February 1980) was a Soviet shipbuilding engineer who worked all his life in Gorky, as Nizhny Novgorod was called in Soviet times. He designed the first Soviet passenger hydrofoils — the Raketa, Meteor and Kometa — which carried passengers on rivers and seas across the Soviet Union and were exported abroad, and the Ekranoplan, a craft that flies a few metres above the water on the cushion of air trapped under its wings. His giant experimental ekranoplan, the KM, built in Gorky and first observed by Western intelligence on the Caspian Sea in 1967, became known in the West as the "Caspian Sea Monster".[1][2][8]

Alekseev was the chief designer of the Central Design Bureau for Hydrofoils in Gorky, a Doctor of Technical Sciences, a laureate of the Lenin Prize and of two State Prizes (one of them awarded posthumously in 1984), and an Honoured Inventor of the RSFSR. Nizhny Novgorod — one of Russia's largest cities, standing where the Oka flows into the Volga — has named its technical university and the design bureau after him.[1][2][3]

The "Caspian Sea Monster"

The KM (from korabl-maket, "model ship") was laid down at the Krasnoye Sormovo shipyard in Gorky in 1963. It was 92 metres long, had a wingspan of 37.6 metres and a maximum take-off weight of 544 tonnes, and was powered by ten turbojet engines; until the appearance of the Antonov An-225 it remained the heaviest flying machine in the world.[2][5][7] In June 1966 it was launched and, partly dismantled and mostly at night, towed down the Volga from Gorky to Kaspiysk on the Caspian Sea, where the bureau had its test base. Its first flight took place on 18 October 1966; one of the two pilots was Alekseev himself.[5][6][7]

The craft did not stay secret for long. A research paper of the US Central Intelligence Agency, written in 1979 and declassified in 2012, states that the first and largest Soviet "surface-effect vehicle", "which the West dubbed the Caspian Sea Monster, was observed in 1967", and notes that "this 300-foot vehicle is much larger than the biggest transport aircraft".[8] American photo-interpreters already used the name around 1969: a list of briefings offered by the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center describes, under the heading "Caspian Sea Monster", a large aircraft-like vehicle seen "resting on barges" at Kaspiysk, with short stubby wings, a high T-shaped tail and 10–12 jet engines.[9] A US KH-8 reconnaissance satellite photographed the Kaspiysk test facility on 19 March 1968, and in 1971 the centre issued a photo board titled "Caspian Sea Monster (KASP A)"; as late as 1977 the "Caspian Sea monster" was still among the subjects of a CIA briefing.[23][10][11]

By 1988 American intelligence knew where the craft came from. A CIA study of that year, "Soviet Wing-in-Ground-Effect Vehicles: A New Player in Naval Surface Warfare", names Alekseyev as the chief designer at the Central Design Bureau for Hydrofoil Ships, who "designed piloted subscale WIGs and tested them at a public reservoir in Gor'kiy", and states that the Soviet craft were designed by the bureau "at the Krasnoye Sormovo Shipyard in Gor'kiy".[12] The US Department of Defense described the programme to the public in its annual reports Soviet Military Power: in 1987 it wrote that the Soviets "continued its pursuit of wing-in-ground (WIG) technology for amphibious vehicles", and in 1988 that they were expected to deploy a new class of such craft "for which there is no US counterpart".[13][14]

The KM crashed into the sea in 1980, soon after Alekseev's death, through a pilot's error.[7] Its successors — the Orlyonok transport and landing craft, accepted by the Soviet Navy in 1979, and the missile-carrying Lun — were also built at Krasnoye Sormovo.[2][12][16] The only completed Lun was laid down at Krasnoye Sormovo in 1986; in July 2020 it was towed for fourteen hours from Kaspiysk along the Caspian coast to Derbent, to become the centrepiece of a planned "Patriot Park". The move was covered by the international press: CNN described Nizhny Novgorod as "an industrial city on the banks of the river Volga closely connected with the origins of ekranoplan technology", and The War Zone noted that a second, unfinished Lun hull had remained in Nizhny Novgorod.[15][16]

Hydrofoils abroad

The first Raketa was launched in Gorky in 1957 and sent to Moscow for the World Festival of Youth and Students; its first passenger voyage ran from Gorky to Kazan.[2][5] In 1958 the jury of the Brussels World's Fair awarded the Krasnoye Sormovo plant its Grand Gold Medal for the Raketa.[2]

Soviet hydrofoils were then promoted abroad by the state foreign trade company Sudoimport, which sent the boats on demonstration voyages to the main ports of Scandinavia, Western Europe, the Mediterranean and the Far East.[19] The first Western customer on the Danube was the Hungarian state shipping company MAHART: in 1961 it ordered two Raketas, which arrived in Budapest in August 1962 as Sirály I and Sirály II, and MAHART became the first operator to run hydrofoil services on the middle and upper Danube.[19] British Pathé newsreels of 1968 show a small Soviet hydrofoil on a test run on the Thames from Westminster Pier and a Kometa on a goodwill visit to the Netherlands.[17][18] A scheduled hydrofoil service on the Thames opened on 30 May 1974 with the inaugural trip of the Raketa Greenwich from Tower Bridge to Westminster, and in 1975, according to the trade magazine Hovering Craft & Hydrofoil, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip returned from Greenwich to Westminster at the Queen's request on the Raketa Thames.[22]

Later boats of the bureau Alekseev founded travelled even further. MAHART lists operators of the Voskhod-2 type in Canada (seven boats), Vietnam, Hungary, Malaysia, Slovakia and the Netherlands, and still sells hydrofoil trips between Budapest and Vienna.[20] In Greece the "Flying Dolphin" hydrofoils were all Soviet-built; Hellenic Seaways retired the last three of them in 2022.[21]

Gorky: education and early work

Alekseev was born on 18 December 1916 in Novozybkov, then in the Chernigov province and now in the Bryansk Region, into the family of a teacher and an agronomist.[2][1] In 1929 his father was arrested on a false denunciation and exiled; after his release in 1933 the family settled in Gorky.[2] In 1935 Rostislav entered the shipbuilding faculty of the Gorky Industrial Institute named after A. A. Zhdanov — now the Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University n.a. R.E. Alekseev.[2][3] In 1940–1941 he also studied at the Naval Academy in Leningrad, from which he was dismissed in 1941.[2]

In October 1941 he defended his diploma project, "A glider on hydrofoils"; the examination commission found that it had the level of a research work.[4][2] On 24 October 1941 he was hired by the Krasnoye Sormovo plant, where during the war he worked in the technical control department accepting T-34 tanks.[4] From 1942 he carried out research and tests of hydrofoil vessels, and in 1943 he became head of the hydrofoil laboratory he had organised at the plant.[1][2] A boat built under his direction reached 87 km/h in trials in 1945. In 1950 serial production began of hydrofoil torpedo boats developed under his guidance, and in 1951 he received the Stalin (State) Prize for his work in shipbuilding.[1][2]

From sailing yachts to hydrofoils

Alekseev's interest in speed on the water appeared long before his engineering career: from 1936 to 1953 he took part in sailing races on the Volga, winning first place nine times and second place three times.[1]

It was his dissatisfaction with the speed of sailing boats that led him in 1938 to the idea of using hydrofoils. When the first hydrofoil passenger vessel, the Raketa, came out onto the Volga in 1957, it became clear that a turning point had come in Soviet shipbuilding. Alekseev was the first to formulate the basic principles of designing high-speed vessels of different types, on which both naval hydrofoil warships and the high-speed passenger fleet were later built.[1]

Alekseev's colleagues never specifically put him forward as a leader — he became one by default, owing to his professional qualities.

— Krasny Sormovich, the Krasnoye Sormovo plant newspaper, "Personality in History" column[1]

The high-speed passenger fleet

In January 1955 Alekseev became head of the Central Design Bureau for Hydrofoils. From the 1950s he led the creation of a Soviet high-speed passenger fleet: in 1957 the Raketa set off on its first passenger voyage to Kazan, and in the 1960s it was followed by the Meteor, the Sputnik, the Vikhr, the Kometa and, later, the Voskhod.[1]

The first captain of the Raketa was Viktor Grigoryevich Poluektov: he accepted the new vessels at the plant, put them into service and commanded the Meteors, the Sputnik and the Burevestnik.[1]

For the creation of passenger hydrofoils Alekseev and a group of the bureau's specialists received the Lenin Prize in 1962; in the same year he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Technical Sciences and the title of Honoured Inventor of the RSFSR.[1][2]

Ekranoplans

Alekseev came to ekranoplans through his work on cavitation — the formation of vapour cavities on the foils of fast vessels, which limits their speed. As early as 1947 he arrived at the idea of "taking" the hull of a high-speed vessel out of the water and placing it in a less dense medium, the air, while keeping the wings. This idea lay at the root of all his later projects.[1]

In 1961 the first self-propelled ekranoplan model was built, and with it Alekseev convinced the leadership of the industry and the country that the direction was promising.[1] On 14 October 1961 he himself piloted the first demonstration flight of the SM-1 ekranoplan in Gorky.[2] Under his leadership the KM, the Orlyonok, the Lun, the Volga-2 and other craft were built; several of them were built for the Navy.[1] The American study of 1988 noted that the size of the Soviet craft ranged "from about 100 kilograms to 400 metric tons".[12]

Alekseev's position in the bureau did not always match his authority. In 1968 the bureau he had created was divided in two, for hydrofoils and for ekranoplans, and he was left only with the second, as chief designer of a new ekranoplan sub-bureau.[2][5] In 1974, during a test flight of the Orlyonok that Alekseev was piloting, the rear section of the hull broke away; he brought the craft safely back to base, and no one was hurt, but he was afterwards removed from the project; a bureau order of 1975 relieved him of the post of chief designer of first-generation ekranoplans and appointed him head of the department of advanced design.[5][2]

The experimental base

A distinctive feature of Alekseev's work was the creation of his own research and test base. In a comparatively short time, on the basis of special government decrees, a research and production complex was built:[1]

  • an experimental design department and pilot production — the Volga plant;
  • a branch on the Gorky Reservoir near Chkalovsk;
  • a warm-water test station in Balakhna;
  • a branch for testing ekranoplans in Kaspiysk and a test range on Chechen Island in the Caspian Sea;
  • a hydrodynamic test tank, wind tunnels and test tracks, research laboratories, and test benches for engines and structures.

The team

In some years the number of people working in this complex reached almost five thousand. Alekseev knew many of the bureau's staff personally and promoted them according to their personal qualities.[1]

Among those who stood with him at the origins of Soviet high-speed shipbuilding were L. S. Popov, B. A. Zobnin, N. A. Zaitsev, I. M. Shalkin and I. I. Yerlykin. A significant contribution to the creation of hydrofoils and ekranoplans was made by the designer V. P. Yefremov, the chief designers V. V. Sokolov, V. N. Kirillovykh and B. F. Orlov, and the chief engineer V. A. Markov.[1]

The testing of new craft, often at the risk of life, was carried out mainly by former pilots: the head of the test service A. M. Petrov, later V. S. Abrazheyev, and the test pilots V. F. Loginov, A. I. Mitusov, V. F. Troshin and I. G. Dobrovolsky.[1]

Death

In January 1980, at the bureau's test base in Chkalovsk, tests began of a passenger ekranoplan model, the eight-seat Volga-2. During the tests Alekseev somehow took part of the weight of the 800-kilogram craft on himself; peritonitis developed, and after three operations he died of complications on 9 February 1980.[5][6][2]

Recognition and memory

In 1963 Alekseev was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. He was awarded the Order of the October Revolution and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, ministerial awards and jubilee medals. In 1984 he was posthumously awarded the State Prize for his work in shipbuilding — for the creation of the Orlyonok — and the Central Design Bureau for Hydrofoils was named after him.[1][2]

By an order of the Federal Agency for Education of 1 March 2007, the Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University was renamed in his honour.[3] His name is also borne by a square in the Sormovo district and by School No. 183 there; in 2009 a monument to him was unveiled in the centre of Sormovo, on Yubileyny Boulevard (Юбилейный бульвар).[1][2] On 14 October 2016, 55 years to the day after his first demonstration flight of the SM-1, a monument in the form of the Volga-2 ekranoplan, his last design, was unveiled by the university's first building on Minina Street (улица Минина).[2] The "Russian Wings" museum in Chkalovsk, where his bureau had its Volga test base, has a large exhibition about his life and work.[2]

See also

Sources

  1. biblmr.r52.ru — Krasny Sormovich, No. 49, 17 December 2021, "Personality in history": on the 105th anniversary of the chief designer, p. 11 (in Russian)
  2. Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University — newspaper Politekhnik, No. 9 (162), 23 November 2016, special issue for R. E. Alekseev's centenary, with a chronology of his life (in Russian) (archive)
  3. Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University — "History" of the university (in Russian) (archive)
  4. Central Design Bureau for Hydrofoils named after R. E. Alekseev — "History" of the bureau (in Russian) (archive)
  5. Argumenty i Fakty — "The designer of 'flying ships'. The genius and tragedy of Rostislav Alekseev", 18 December 2014 (in Russian) (archive)
  6. Argumenty i Fakty — "How Rostislav Alekseev combined an aircraft and a ship", 14 February 2024, republished by V fokuse (in Russian) (archive)
  7. Popular Mechanics (Russian edition) — "The Caspian Monster: what the Soviet turbojet ekranoplan looked like", 13 April 2022 (in Russian) (archive)
  8. Central Intelligence Agency — National Foreign Assessment Center, "Soviet Amphibious Forces: Tasks and Capabilities in General War and Peacetime", research paper SR 79-10065, June 1979 (released 2012) (archive)
  9. Central Intelligence Agency — National Photographic Interpretation Center, "NPIC Special Briefings", list of briefings, undated (c. 1969), CIA-RDP78B05703A000500050019-6 (archive)
  10. Central Intelligence Agency — National Photographic Interpretation Center, "Caspian Sea Monster (KASP A)", photo board, 19 June 1971, CIA-RDP78T05929A004500060001-5 (archive)
  11. Central Intelligence Agency — Memorandum for the record "Subjects covered in 15 June 1977 Briefing", 26 June 1977 (archive)
  12. Central Intelligence Agency — Directorate of Intelligence, "Soviet Wing-in-Ground-Effect Vehicles: A New Player in Naval Surface Warfare", November 1988 (archive)
  13. U.S. Department of Defense — Soviet Military Power 1987, March 1987 (DTIC ADA189858)
  14. U.S. Department of Defense — Soviet Military Power: An Assessment of the Threat 1988
  15. CNN — Miquel Ros, "The 'Caspian Sea Monster,' a Lun-class Ekranoplan, rises from the grave", 22 October 2020 (archive)
  16. The War Zone — Joseph Trevithick, "The Only Missile-Toting Ekranoplan Russia Ever Built Just Took Its Last Trip On The Caspian", 31 July 2020 (archive)
  17. British Pathé — newsreel "Russian Hydrofoil", a Soviet hydrofoil on the Thames at Westminster Pier, issued 21 January 1968 (archive)
  18. British Pathé — newsreel "Russian Hydrofoil", the Kometa on a goodwill visit to Holland, issued 1 August 1968 (archive)
  19. MAHART PassNave — "On foils for 30 years — MAHART hydrofoil service 1962–1992"
  20. MAHART PassNave — "MAHART hydrofoil fleet"
  21. Ships Monthly — "Gallery: Greek hydrofoils", 27 September 2022 (archive)
  22. London Reconnections — "Soviet fleet on the Thames (Part 1)", 19 May 2020, quoting the magazine Hovering Craft & Hydrofoil (1975) (archive)
  23. National Reconnaissance Office — "KH-8 Image of Kaspiysk Special Research and Development Facility on the Caspian Sea in the Former Soviet Union, 19 March 1968", declassified satellite image (archive)