They are a few years old, but the photos at the blog below showing the Soviet-era “Lun” ekranoplan are just damned impressive:
For those not in the know, an “ekranoplan,” AKA a wing-in-ground-effect vehicle, is a flying boat designed to cruise at extremely low altitudes, typically about the same height as the wing chord length (the distance fore-to-aft from the wing leading edge to trailing edge). The purpose of this is to ride on the cushion of high pressure air squeezed between the wing and the water; a small, stubby wing can produce a surprisingly large amount of lift in doing so. The result can be a very large aircraft that can carry a massive payload a long distance. In this case, the Lun was designed to help the Soviet Union invade western Europe. On top were six launch tubes for fairly large nuclear-tipped P-270 anti-ship missiles.
While this is an example of a machine designed to aid one of the most evil ideologies in human history to conquer the world, it is nevertheless an impressive machine and it’s sad to see it left to rot. However, apparently there are plans to put it back into production.