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Hovering Craft & Hydrofoil Magazine March 1967 Vol 6 No 6

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Hovering Craft & Hydrofoil Magazine March 1967 Vol 6 No 6 no G CRAFT & HYDROFO THE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF AIR CUSHION VEHICLES AND HYDROFOILS e're on ops no b'IW THE WORLD'S FIRST FULL Y-OPERATIONAL HOVERCRAFT SQUADRON BHC hovercraft have now BHC hovercraft lead the world. BHC hovercraft are the only joined the forces - as regulars Incorporating systems and hovercraft that have been used on enlisted for active service, at components proven in over 20,000 military operations - both by British home and abroad, with the hours of operation all over the Defence Forces and by the U.S. Royal Corps of Transport world, the 10-ton SR.N6 carries 30 Navy. They have proved themselves in extremes of climatic conditions,, Hovercraft Squadron. This fully-equipped troops or over 3 tons of freight, and is able to from tropical jungles and deserts vital decision by the British mount the latest weapons systems. to the frozen arctic - from Sweden Government to purchase BHC It cruises at 56 knots and is to Sarawak, from Thailand to the SR.NG's for the world's first unrestricted by reefs, sandbanks, far north of Canada. fully-operational hovercraft underwater defences, ice, tide BH C strength is further emphasised squadron, marks the full state or shallows, giving military by the recent Government decision establishment of hovercraft as forces a freedom and speed of to order the larger 40-ton BH.7 in front-line vehicles with a vital movement by day or night far in both the patrol boat version and role in military operations and advance of anything feasible for the logistics support version. will undoubtedly influence conventional craft. The 10-ton SR.N6 is in full production with the 40-ton BH.7 defence planning throughout to follow shortly. the world. BRITISH HOVERCRAFT-WORLD LEADERS IN THE HOVER TRANSPORT REVOLUTION I 4 1966 WrrruNo *mcR*n rlMtrsn SAdHOEOS ROE DIVISION Ebritish hovercra t corporation limited VEOVlb ENGLAND MARCH1967 Vor. 6, No 6 Editor : JUANITA KALERGHI HOVERING CRAFT AND HYDROFOIL is produced by Kaierglzi Publicatio~zs, 50-52 Blandford Stveet, London, WI. Telephone WELbeck 8678. Pvinted in Great Britain by Villiers Publications, London, NW5. Annual subscrip- tion: Five Guineas UK and equivalent overseas. USA and Carzada $15. There are twelve issues annually. Contents of this issue are the copyright of Kalerglli HOVEMNC CRAFT Publications. Perniission to reproduce pictures and text can be granted only under written agreement. Extracts & HYDROFOIL or coniments may be made with due acknowledgemenf to Hoveving Craft nnd Hydrofoil. FOUNDED OCTOBER 1961 ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE L. Ternple Rosswiclc Ltd, 3 Queens Court, Queensway, London, W2. Telephone BAYs~vatev5812 First Hovering Craft & Hydrufoil Monthly in the World RITISH HOVERCRAFT CORPORATION are no longer the sole and water-screw propulsion will be incorporated. B possessors of a licence to manufacture hovercraft in There will be savings, too, in personnel. Training pilots Britain. Eighteen months after it started in business, for amphibious craft is an expensive business, Hover- Hovermarine Ltd has been given the go-ahead by Hover- marine's sidewall craft will be handled by marine skippers. craft Development Ltd to start production of sidewall The first Hovermarine craft is, after all, basically a marine craft in this country. The company will be unable, under conception. The lift engine and fan system are started up its licence, to touch flexible skirts, which remain the virtual and run at a fixed duty like the electrical generator system monopoly of BHC. But, late and limited. though it is, of a boat. the grant of Hovermarine's licence deserves an uninhibited Sideways drift will not be the problem it is to amphi- welcome. bious hovercraft in crosswinds. That is because of the HDL may seem open to criticism on the ground that it immersed keels. Nevertheless the new craft may eventually is preventing competition between manufacturers of have a certain amount of amphibious capability. It is similar types of craft. But it is encouraging healthy rivalry hoped that, at a later stage, the craft will be able to climb between the two main lines of hovercraft development. slipways. Indeed Hovermarine have already filed patents We can now settle down to watch a fascinating wall versus for necessary adaptations. skirt contest whose outcome will be pure gain to the industry as a whole, whatever the effects on the contenders. Three or four operators have already approached One possible result, perhaps the most likely one, is that Hovermarine for its new craft. Between Grimsby and Hull the Humber offers an obvious route. On the military each type will be found to have its advantages for different operations. Certainly this is what Hovermarine appear to side, Hovermarine will try to persuade buyers of the value envisage. As against the obvious drawback that their craft of their craft as helicopter carriers and fast patrol craft. will not be amphibious, they point out that for the opera- The possibilities are wide. tors who wish to reduce their financial risk, the first of Our final commendation should go to the City commo- their projected craft will be a 68-seater costing only about dity brokers C. Czarnikow Ltd who have given Hover- £60,000, whilst a 38-seater SR.N6 costs £120,000, Main- marine major financial backing. It is good to see a young tenance and running costs are correspondingly less since and enthusiastic team backed by experienced men in the normal marine components - marine diesels, for example, City. The Hovercraft Pioneers 4 The First Air-Stabilised Suprarnar Hydrofoil Built by Westerrnoen Shipyard 15 People and Projects 7 f he World's Largest Hovereraft 20 The Application of Hovereraft 12 The History of Hydrofoils 28 COVER PICTURE : The first air-stabilised, 65-tort passenger hydrofoil craft. (See article on page 15) Bryan Coo INthe short time that hovercraft have been in existence, they have not only introduced an entirely new concept in transportation but they now represent a thriving industry in their own right. It is only ten years since the first company, Hovercraft Limited, was formed by Christopher Cockerel1 in 1957 for the purpose of promoting his revolutionary idea. And yet in this period of time there have been significant advances. A number of different companies in the aviation and shipbuilding industries have worked on design studies and experimented with various prototypes. Regular passenger-carrying ferry services have been inaugurated. Craft have been tested under many operational conditions - over snow and ice, desert and jungle, in calm inland waters and rough seas. Orders are now mounting for production craft, and the military use of hovercraft has been proved in Borneo and Viet- nam. Britain has the world's first fully-operational hovercraft squadron. The first hover- craft races have been held, in Australia and England. To the general public, hovercraft are no longer a one-day-wonder but have become such an accepted fact of life that a popular national newspaper can successfully run a "do-it-yourself hovercraft" promotion campaign. All this in ten years. And events continue to progress so rapidly that it is some- times difficult to remember just how short a time ago it was that the first hovercraft were built. As with the development of any new idea, it was mainly due to the drive and imagina- tion of a few pioneers in the early days that made hovercraft possible. Designers, engineers, test-pilots, financiers and civil servants all played their part at a time when there were many in responsible positions who said the idea was impractical and would not work. The leading pioneer was, of course, Christopher Cockerel1 himself, but there were others who had to make the concept a reality. It is these men, the pioneers of a new industry, who are the subject of this series of articles. First come the test-pilots, the forerunners of a new profession of hovercraft pilots who are today known as Hover-Commanders. They are now mainly concerned with training new pilots to meet the increasing demand from ferry operators and military services. But a few years ago, it was they themselves who sat at the controls of new hovercraft prototypes and, starting from scratch, developed techniques for piloting them. Three men in particular have pioneered work in this field - Leslie Colquhoun, Peter Lamb, and Peter Ayles. The subject of this first profile is Leslie Colquhoun. In July 1962 the world's first commercial hovercraft ser- vice was operated between the towns of Rhyl and Wallasey. Over a period of eight weeks, nearly 4,000 fare-paying pas- sengers were carried in the VA-3 craft built by Vickers- Armstrongs (Engineers) Limited. The chief pilot on this service, and also Hovercraft Operations Manager for Vickers, was Leslie Colquhoun. He thus became the first man to pilot a regular passenger-carrying hovercraft. Today, Leslie Colquhoun has moved on from the chal- lenge of test-flying to a new challenge in the world of business. At the age of forty-six, he is Managing Director of Hoverlloyd, a British-registered operating company set up jointly by Swedish Lloyd and Swedish American, and from an office in Ramsgate he is organising the cross- Channel hovercraft ferry service which Hoverlloyd first pioneered last year. But he is still concerned with the practical business of piloting hovercraft as an instructor of new pilots for this service. "We took a tremendous risk," says Colquhoun as he recalls the days of that first commercial service by Vickers. "It hadn't been done before, and we weren't even sure that the craft would stand up to it." In fact, there were break- downs, although most of these were repaired by engineers working all through the night so that the public was hardly aware they had occurred.
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