When was the hovercraft made

Cockerell served as director and technical advisor until The first passenger-carrying hovercraft was introduced in and was called the Vickers VA Cockerell earned more than 50 patents on the hovercraft, while working both independently and for Hovercraft Development. He was knighted for his services to the engineering field in From to , he served as Chairman of Wavepower, Ltd.

He died in Since its introduction, the hovercraft has been used for human transport, for oil crew boats, for travel over mud and ice in challenging climates, and by national coastguards, military personnel, and fishery patrols. The Isle of Wight crossing is great, but what happened to the potential? Hovering trains fell foul of the inability to change tracks without massive complex infrastructure.

The potential for heavy load movement in confined areas seems to have been a neglected area of potential application. As a young engineer I had the most thrilling commute across the Solent from Southampton to Cowes every day in a Hovercraft.

I remember once at low water spring tide, Calshot bank was well above the water, the passengers were very excited when we were heading to it at full speed and then silenced when we just rode over.

We used one as civil engineering platform on tidal flats. Innovation and Research and development can be very expensive, and to day there simply is not the availability of funds and vision or venture capital to look at new and innovative projects.

As a junior engineer in the technical office at Vickers South Marston I had the privilege of working on the VA series of hovercraft. It was powered by Turbomeca helicopter engines, which at the time were suffering from turbine disc failures, so the engine nacelles were wrapped with stainless steel as a precaution.

The first flight was by Colquhoun the test pilot at South Marston without the passenger pod. The Sixties and Seventies saw hovercraft develop worldwide with gas turbines and riveted aircraft technology and prove themselves as true amphibians in many new roles. By the end of the decade the fuel crisis saw the doubling of running costs and hovercraft became less cost effective. Fortunately in the s with new cost-effective craft running on diesel and constructed with welded aluminium hulls, the hovercraft re-established itself.

After fine-tuning his designs, Sir Christopher Cockerell secured funding to build a Hovercraft. Saunders Roe, the flying boat firm at Cowes on the Isle of Wight was given the contract. It took them eight months to build the 20ft craft which first took to the seas on 25th July , crossing the English Channel from Calais to Dover in two hours with Christopher Cockerell onboard.

The Hovercraft was a revolution in sea travel. However the passenger hovercraft were hit by the rise in fuel prices in the s and the Hovertravel service between Southsea and Ryde is now the only passenger Hovercraft service left in Britain. The Hovercraft Museum at Lee on Solent has conserved around hovercraft built over the past 50 years.

The Museum Trust, based at HMS Daedalus, is home to a collection of around of these incredible craft from the mammoth SRN4 Cross Channel Hovercraft down to some of the first radio controlled models used to prove the hovercraft concept.