A flying submarine or submersible aircraft is a craft able both to fly or travel under water.

History

The Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 tried to develop a flying submarine

Submarine

A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...

 during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. The design could have operated at 150 knots in the air and 3 knots in the water. Metal plates sealed the engines shut. At the Naval Engineering Institute, a flying submarine project was headed by engineer Boris Ushakov. In 1939 the project was temporarily suspended and classified. In 1943 on the orders of L. Beria, the project was resumed. In 1947 the first test of the flying submarine was performed. In 1953, on the orders Khrushchev, the project was closed. The design never "got off the ground".

In 1961 Donald Reid designed and built a single-seat craft (32.83 ft length) capable of flight and underwater movement, the Reid Flying Submarine 1 (RFS-1). A 65 hp (48 kW) engine mounted on a pylon provided propulsion for flight; a 1 hp electric motor in the tail provided underwater propulsion. The pilot used an aqualung

Aqua-lung

Aqua-Lung was the original name of the first open-circuit free-swimming underwater breathing set in reaching worldwide popularity and commercial success...

 for breathing underwater. The first full-cycle flight [underwater at 6.5 feet (2 m) depth, airborne at 33 ft (10 m) altitude] was demonstrated on 9 June 1964.

In 2008, DARPA announced that it was preparing to issue contracts for a submersible aircraft.

Flying subs in fiction

A wide variety of flying submersible craft can be found in the X-COM: Terror from the Deep

X-COM: Terror from the Deep

X-COM: Terror from the Deep is a strategy video game released in 1995 for the PC. It is the sequel to UFO: Enemy Unknown, and the second part of the X-COM series.-Gameplay:...

 video game.

A flying submarine was a feature in:

• Tom Swift and His Diving Seacopter, the seventh book of the second series.
• Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (TV series)
  Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (TV series)
  Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is a 1960s American science fiction television series based on the 1961 film of the same name. Both were created by Irwin Allen, which enabled the movie's sets, costumes, props, special effects models, and sometimes footage, to be used in the production of the...
  
  
• Inspector Gadget
  Inspector Gadget
  Inspector Gadget is an animated television series that revolves around the adventures of a clumsy, simple-witted cyborg detective named Inspector Gadget – a human being with various bionic gadgets built into his body. Gadget's arch-nemesis is Dr...
  
  
• The Japanese Toho Studios film Atragon
  Atragon
  Atragon, released in Japan as , is a 1963 Toho tokusatsu film based on a series of juvenile adventure novels under the banner Kaitei Gunkan by Shunrō Oshikawa and the illustrated story Kaitei Okoku by illustrator Shigeru Komatsuzaki, serialized in a monthly magazine for boys...
  
  .
• The 2001 Steven Spielberg
  Steven Spielberg
  Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
  
   film A.I. Artificial Intelligence ("Amphibicopter")
• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
  Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
  Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a 2004 American pulp adventure science-fiction film written and directed by Kerry Conran in his directorial debut. The film is set in an alternative 1939 and follows the adventures of Polly Perkins , a newspaper reporter, and Harry Joseph "Joe" Sullivan ,...
  
  
• The Incredibles
  The Incredibles
  The Incredibles is a 2004 American computer-animated action-comedy superhero film about a family of superheroes who are forced to hide their powers. It was written and directed by Brad Bird, a former director and executive consultant of The Simpsons, and was produced by Pixar and distributed by...
  
  
• In the game Red Alert 3 the fictional Empire of the Rising Sun uses flying submarines (ironically, anti-aircraft capable when on water and anti-ground when airborne) as part of their army.