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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 1080.PDF
- •. ;s; -:: , • ~ • . FLIGHT International supplement, 28 February 1963 FEBRUARY 1963 A /#*- Cushion Vehicles Editor-in-Chief Maurice A. Smith DFC Editor H. F. King MBE Technical Editor W. T. Gunston Production Editor Roy Casey Managing Director H. N. Priaulx MBE SEPARATING FACT FROM FICTION Volume 2 No 8 Iliffe Transport Publications Ltd Dorset House, Stamford Street, London SE1 Telephone: Waterloo 3333 (Telex 25137) Telegrams: Flightpres London Telex Annual subscriptions Home 18s. Overseas 18s. Canada and USA $3 Branch Offices 8-10 Corporation Street, Coventry Telephone: Coventry 25210 King Edward House, New Street, Birmingham 2 Telephone: Midland 7191 260 Deansgate, Manchester 3 Telephone: Blackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595 62 Buchanan Street, Glasgow CI Telephone: Central 1265/6 New York, N.Y. Thomas Skinner & Company (Publishers) Ltd 111 Broadway 6 Telephone: Digby 9-1197 © Iliffe Transport Publications Ltd 1963. Permission to reproduce illustrations and letterpress can be granted only under written agreement. Brief extracts or comments may be nude with due acknowledgement. "THEY TOOK A 'W ATER-SPIDER,' six hundred feet long by three hundred in width, the deck of which was one hundred feet above the surface, which carried them over the water at the rate of a mile a minute, around the eastern end of Cuba, through Windward Pass age, and so to the South American mainland . . ." The massive craft described had been designed in the recognition that "a body can be carried over the water much faster than through it"; and in its construction "a pressure of air" could be "forced down upon the enclosed surface of the water." It was further remarked: "Although, on account of their size, which covers several acres, they can go in any water, they give the best results on Mediter raneans and lakes that are free from ocean rollers, and, under favourable conditions, make better speed than the nineteenth-century express trains, and, of course, going straight as the crow flies, and without stopping, they reach a destination in considerably shorter time." Amazingly enough the foregoing passages are quoted from a work of Victorian fiction. But it is said that truth is stranger than fiction, and the factual reports and memoranda of Mr C. S. Cockerell, reviewed for the first time in this issue, are no less fascinating. They are indeed the stuff of history, telling of one inventor's endeavours, disappointments, triumphs and con tinuing perseverance. This man Cockerell is one of the kind whom we once described in a Flight leader as a man apart; but he is not a man alone, and his gratitude to those who helped his project along is warm and sincere. Among these his wife is acknowledged on a later page. Next comes A. D. Truman. "The thing that comes out of reading some of the early stuff is that one cannot get anywhere until one can succeed in interesting and identifying other people with the pro ject." The words are those of Mr Cockerell; and it was Mr Truman, a fellow boatbuilder at Oulton Broad, who made the beautiful little working in this issue International News 16 The Cockerell Papers 19 Present and Future 22 ACVs for the Army 26 The Linear Induction Motor 30 Letters 31 Industry 31 The Ice Queen 32 model depicted in this issue. There was also the civil servant in the then Ministry of Supply—Mr R. A. Shaw—a man of courage and imagination and who is acknowledged by Mr Cockerell as having played a vital part. Lord Hals- bury, too, had a role—in sustaining the project at a critical stage; and when the NRDC came into the picture (again we quote Mr Cockerell) "Denis Hennessey got the job of looking after it—and has been tireless ever since." Saunders-Roe, of course, did "a magnificent job" as builders of SR.N1. Yet the project still has far to go. Competition from abroad is mounting month by month, technical and opera tional problems persist. Much remains to be discovered concerning both the future and the past of air-riding vehicles, and that this journal is already playing a part is, we think, evident from one simple and interesting fact: in our pre vious issue we printed a letter from a master mariner proposing the use of ACVs as ice-breakers; and in the present issue we report a Russian claim to have possessed an ACV "hover cutter" in 1934. Fact or fiction? We hope one day to give the answer. 16
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