Brief History Of Hovercraft
The first known concept for a vehicle that could be called a hovercraft was in 1716. This vehicle never made it past the concept stage since the designer, Swedish Emanuel Swedenborg, used a man powered, oar driven system for propulsion. Obviously, this idea just could not produce enough power to lift the craft.
In the 1870’s British Sir John Isaac Thornycroft actually built a number of test models and filed some patents on his ground effect vehicles. Still, the other needed technologies were too primative so no practical use was found for his works.
In 1952, the British again get credit for a patent with Christopher Cockerell’s work with air lubricated hull. Cockerell used a vacuum cleaner motor to make his small personal craft actually work. He patented this as the “hovercraft principle” and built test craft to prove this wasn’t just theory.
His work was so good that the British government classified his work as secret and restricted because it was deemed valuable for military purposes.
Fortunately, the British have always been competitive and wanted to keep the lead in development so they took his designs in 1958 and paid for an experimental vehicle to be built. The SR-N1 was built and launched in 1959 and made a crossing of the English Channel from France to England on the anniversary of Bleriot’s first Cross Channel Flight.
Sir Christopher was knighted in 1969 for his services to British Engineering and he coined the term “hovercraft” to describe his invention.
The first passenger hovercraft was the Vickers VA-3, which in 1961 carried passengers regularly along the North Wales Coast from Wallasey to Rhyl.
From here on the rest, as is said, is history.
By 1968 hovercraft were carrying cars across the temperamental and dangerous English Channel. Eventually, the hovercraft were able to carry well over 400 passengers and 60 cars at speeds near 100 MPH. The cross channel use ended in 2000 when it became cheaper to use the Chunnel to traverse the Channel. But, with increased congestion in the Chunnel, plans are afoot for new cross channel effort.
Hovercraft are still used in the U.K. as daily transportation to and from the Isle of Wight.
Hovercraft are widely used around the world to go where no other vehicle can. They are safe and able to traverse any form of mostly level terrain. The US government uses them for both military and US Postal services.
Hovercraft were even used to bring some of the first troops to land in Iraq.
In 50 years of actual use, hovercraft have left the realm of being only large scale people movers and equipment carriers to also being small personal ATV craft for pleasure and performance.