On This Day, June 11th, 1959: The First Hovercraft

On June 11th, 1959, the Saunders-Roe SR-N1, the world’s first hovercraft, was shown to the public in England. The BBC reported:

A revolutionary new form of transport which can operate on sea and land has been officially launched in the Solent, off England’s south coast.

The Hovercraft, which has been described as a cross between an aircraft, a boat and a land vehicle, was invented by boat-builder Christopher Cockerell.

Dubbed a “man-made flying saucer”, the hovercraft is propelled on a cushion of air created by its own fan power.

It therefore hovers just above the waves at sea and avoids any irregular surfaces on land.

Christopher Cockerell, from Lowestoft, began working on a hovercraft model in the mid-1950s. He said he first came up with the idea when he was thinking how to make a boat go faster by reducing the amount of friction caused when it travels through the water.

He first tested the ‘hover’ theory using a cat food tin inside a coffee tin, with an industrial air blower and a pair of kitchen scales.

In 1955 he convinced the Ministry of Supply to back him but he was not able to commercially develop the product immediately as his idea had been placed on the government’s secret list because of its potential benefits to the military.

In 1959 Cockerell managed to get his idea removed from the secret list and formed the Hovercraft Development Company Ltd.

He obtained funding from the National Research Development Council of £150,000 to develop the project.

A contract to build the first Hovercraft was awarded to Saunders Roe, the flying boat firm at Cowes, at the beginning of this year.

The SRN-1, an experimental model, is 29 feet long and 24 feet wide and weighs 6,600lb.

There’s more at the link.

Here’s a very short video clip (transferred from 8mm. movie film, hence the relatively poor quality) of a later, more evolved version of the SR-N1 prototype.

A month after its unveiling, the SR-N1 prototype ‘flew’ across the English Channel from Calais in France to Dover in England, covering the 26-mile distance in just over 2 hours.

The SR-N1 would be developed into six successively more powerful versions, and served as the prototype for many larger and more capable hovercraft. Today, hovercraft are used for both military and civilian transport, although more for the former than the latter. Here’s a US Navy LCAC carrying two 155mm. towed howitzers of the US Marine Corps.

The SR-N1 prototype is today preserved in the Science Museum in England.

Christopher Cockerell lived to see his invention spread throughout the world. He died in 1999.

Peter