[2] The Be-10 was designed in response to Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union directive No.2622-1105ss which called for a turbojet-powered flying boat for open-sea reconnaissance, bombing, torpedo attack and mine-laying.

[1] OKB-49, under the leadership of Gheorgiy M. Beriev took up the challenge of designing and building the izdeliye M (Beriev OKB in-house designation), approval to proceed with prototype manufacture was received in mid-1954, but OKB-49 did not have facilities to build the prototype, so this was performed at the nearby GAZ no.89 (Gosudarstvenny Aviatsionnyy Zavod – state aviation plant/factory), also known as TMZD (Taganrogskiy Mashinostroitel'nyy Zavod imeeni Dimitrova – Taganrog Machinery Plant named after Gheorgi Dimitrov).

Initial ground running of the engines revealed potentially disastrous vibration of the rear fuselage, which caused cracking of skin and structural components as well as loosening nuts and fasteners, also the fracture of pipeline and wiring loom support brackets.

The prototype also underwent trial installation of raised extended air intakes to reduce water ingestion, but they were not adopted for in-service aircraft due to the degradation in performance.

The streamlined hull was fitted with a shallow single-step, sea rudder under the rear fuselage, 50° swept wings with marked anhedral and balance floats attached by short pylons at the wing-tips.