A flying submarine or submersible aircraft is a craft able both to fly or travel under water.
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The Soviet Union tried to develop a flying submarine during World War II. 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".[1]
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[2]). 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 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.[3]
In 2008, DARPA announced that it was preparing to issue contracts for a submersible aircraft.[4][5][6][7]
A wide variety of flying submersible craft can be found in the X-COM: Terror from the Deep video game.
A flying submarine was a feature in:
G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Hasbro, the related animated series and Marvel & Devils Due Comics) regularly featured the SHARK attack submarine, which was capable of air and subversive assaults. The range of these flight varied through the media (originally, it was stated that the shark could make only short range "leaps" and attacks, but the cartoon and comics later "forgot" this. In "G.I Joe: The Rise of Cobra" the SHARK was featured in the final battle, but the movie model varied greatly from the comics and cartoon model, and its flight mode was not established in the movie.