Good find. At first I thought it was another old soviet era craft, I cant remember the name but it was a real monster!. had like 6 engines mounted on a forward wing. the concept was that it would "skim" the surface of the ocean at high speed carrying troops and our equipment. I'm at work now but. ill try to find info on it later if someone else doesn't beat me to it.
The history chnl did a episode on it, the desighner was relegated to siberia IIRC.
The thing was HUGE! they built 1 or 2 and it did fly. I think the prototypes were smaller versions than what they wanted to finally build which is impressive.
The soviets really liked building things on a much larger scale and they had some pretty whacked out ideas that actually made it off the drawing board
EDIT: found it! here is a link
http://www.globalaircraft.org/planes/lun_ekranoplan.plIt was called the ekranoplan Big motha! too
