Records on the water

Pilots flying Beriev seaplanes have set 228 world aviation records recognised by the FAI, a tally few companies of any kind can match. Almost all of them were set by aircraft that take off from water. That is the whole personality of Beriev: for nine decades it has been Russia’s specialist in flying boats and amphibians, a niche so particular that, outside Japan’s ShinMaywa and Canada’s water bombers, it has had the field largely to itself.

A Georgian in Taganrog

The bureau was founded at Taganrog, on the Sea of Azov, in 1934 by Georgy Mikhailovich Beriev, an engineer born in Tiflis. Its first big success, the MBR-2 short-range reconnaissance flying boat, first flew in 1931 as a Beriev design and was built in 1,365 examples between 1934 and 1941, making it the backbone of Soviet naval aviation as war approached. Beriev led the bureau until 1968.

Exile to Siberia and back

War pushed the bureau a very long way from the sea. In 1942, with German armies approaching Taganrog, it was moved to Krasnoyarsk in Siberia, returning to its home port only in 1945. Afterwards came the Be-6 patrol flying boat, 123 built, and the jet-powered Be-10, of which just 28 were made. The type that defined the Cold War bureau was the Be-12 Chayka, a gull-winged anti-submarine amphibian that first flew on 18 October 1960; 150 were built between 1960 and 1973.

Albatros, Altair and a flying boat that hovered

Beriev also built the strange. The VVA-14 designed by Robert Bartini, first flown on 4 September 1972, was meant to take off vertically and skim the waves; two prototypes were built. The A-40 Albatros, first flown on 8 December 1986, was described as the largest multipurpose amphibian in the world, but the collapse of the Soviet Union stopped it at two prototypes. Its layout fed the Be-200 Altair, a jet amphibian and water bomber that flew on 24 September 1998; the name blends Albatros, Taganrog and Irkutsk.

Radar planes in a shooting war

The bureau’s most consequential aircraft has no float at all. The A-50, a radar picket built on the Ilyushin Il-76 airframe, first flew on 19 December 1978 and entered service in 1985; about 42 were built. In the war against Ukraine it became a prime target. Ukraine said it shot down A-50s over the Sea of Azov on 14 January and 23 February 2024, and analysts estimated afterwards that Russia was left with only a handful of serviceable examples. Its successor, the A-100, first flew in November 2017 and was not yet in service.

Factories

• Taganrog works · Taganrog, Rostov Oblast — Home since 1934 except for the wartime evacuation
• Wartime evacuation site · Krasnoyarsk, Siberia — 1942–1945

People

• Georgy Mikhailovich Beriev · founder and chief designer 1934–1968
• Alexei Konstantinov · chief designer 1968–1990
• Robert Bartini · designer of the VVA-14

Records and firsts

• 228 world aviation records registered by the FAI in Beriev seaplanes
• Prize for Quality of the Soviet government, November 1989, the only defence enterprise to win it