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


 Interesting air boat. Unfortunately, the journalists on the webpage throw in too
 much imagination. There is nothing in the design that would indicate "ground
 effect" or "hover" capability. There are no wings, therefore no ground effect
 lift (look up ikranoplan). I don't see a skirt, or indication of any ducted
 fans, no "hover" capability.
 It's a very cool vehicle just the same.
 C. Smith

Do you suppose it was called the "007" as a nod to James Bond?  1961 would have been about the time the first Bond movie was released, and it looks like something Bond would use...

Cool looking piece of machinery.  Does not look like the props contra-rotate though...  Paul, why would they use two props that both spin in the same direction?  It seems to me that contra props would cancel P-factor, while spinning both in the same direction would make it worse...am I missing something?

Moose

Cheaper less weight? :)

It is very common practice to use a lot of blade area on
high power engines when the prop diameter is limited.
You see a lot of this practice on large displacement V8
engines used on air boats. It takes blade area to
absorb the high power of these large displacement engines.

What is interesting is the blade orientation.
Similar to a high lift slotted wing.
Tupolev knew a lot about props as they built
the Bear high speed turbo prop bomber.

Paul Lamar