The Tupolev Gullwing was made by the Russian military to be an
  amphibious boat/sled used to pick up cosmonauts downed in
  Siberia after their spaceflights..."What packs 365 horsepower,
  incorporates a pair of gullwing
  doors, and can transport a 630-pound payload at more than 90 mph
  across the Siberian tundra? It could only be the Tupolev N007,
  one of the oddest and most remarkable pieces of formerly secret
  Soviet machinery to be flushed out by the blossoming of a
  Western market economy.

  Though background information is sometimes contradictory, the
  Tupolev N007 appears to have been developed back in 1961 by
  Andrei Tupolev, the father of Soviet aviation, as a rescue
  vehicle for cosmonauts who fell back to earth on the wastelands
  of the western U.S.S.R. Small enough to be carried in the belly
  of a Soviet cargo helicopter, the N007 could cross ice, snow,
  lakes and swamps with impunity--just the vehicle to lift the
  spirits of any cosmonaut stranded in a hostile, trackless
  territory.

http://tinyurl.com/25wxyry

Dale Callaway Via Reeves Callaway