When I saw the title my first thought was that this was a design based on a plane flying in 1972, but obviously not. However the next thought to jump into my head was why you don't see flying boats much at all anymore? I saw plenty of planes in Seattle and Alaska that were fitted out with pontoons for water landings, but I don't remember ever seeing a plane that had a hull designed for water landing. I presume the answer is economical, -that it's more profitable to build an airframe that can add water landing attributes aftermarket (and have better performance than a flying boat?) than it is to build a flying boat that may not always land in the water.

With helicopters around - and growing infrastructure for "normal" planes - flying boats have extremely limited use.

That and a dedicated flying boat is more expensive to care for and service than an equivelent land plane.

Is this a sketck-portrait of an actual fuselage or just something from out your own widdle haid?

Just a wacky bit of mine from a long long time ago

Ooooh, gorgeous!

Great design!

That's a great drawing but I'm curious why did you offset the wing from the body so much?

It does not make much sense neither from aerodynamic (pitch stability must suffer greatly, plus it cuts the ground effect zone) nor mechanical (These struts must be wickedly complex with all those control, fuel and electrical lines running through them) point of view.

I guess I'm overthinking things...

The proportions look similar to the PBY Catalina, and them things would stay in ground effect indefinitely if you let 'em! (per a buddy of my uncle's, who flew 'em in WWII)

I agree, but.. Eh, I guess I've been looking at ekranoplans too much lately!

Those are neat beasts, but built like bricks. And I'd bet had short service lives.

To the craft meant to spearhead an invasion on the US shores service life is an alien term.

Really, they only managed to get few prototypes flying before whole project got axed together with Chruschev.

Keep the wings and engines out of the spray. Water ingestion is obvious, but spray impact on the flying surfaces either mean tougher(heavier) construction or potential damage, as well as corrosion issues.

Oh! This makes sense.

Loverly design! And it'd prolly fly like a dream, too, following the 'if it looks good, it'll fly good' maxim.

I kinda dig the crazy radio antennas myself.

If you mean the wing tip to tail wires, a not uncommon feature of a LOT of aircraft.

Yeah. I'm darn near building the thing in my head just to figure out where all those wires will go.

Replying to your shout - There have been many turbo-prop'ed boats. A big Japanese ASW/SAR four-engined thing, turbo'ed conversions of several of the smaller Grumman boats, turbo'ed Do24, the big Russian gull-winged twin, and several prototypes or failed to go operational/full production types by the US and UK, including the huge Princess boats.