FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1963
1963 - 2277.PDF
Air-Cushion Vehicles FLIGHT International supplement, 22 August 1% HOVERCRAFT IN THE HOUSE make for the construction of roads at the present time. It would be in the ratio of £1 per £1 which industry is putting up and similar in principle once again to what the D.S.I.R. does for research. So we have two precedents for that sort of assistance. If such a scheme came into operation, could we find operators to run these ser vices? I think that we could. There are plenty of people interested in marine transport, particularly in the Isle of Wight and on the Solent; companies like the Red Funnel Steamer Company and the South down Bus Company which ran an experi mental hovercraft service in connection with Westland. There is the possibility that the Transport Holding Company might be interested. In London, a scheme like this would help the Denny Hovercraft Com pany, which is a subsidiary of Denny Bros, to keep going and possibly run a service in the future. Fast, Safe, Reliable The operation of the hover-bus now running on the Thames comes to an end on 31st October. It is much cheaper than a full-scale hovercraft for it is more like a boat than a flying machine. If such a service were developed, it could grow into a com muter service from Hammersmith and Chelsea to the City, running at 20 or 30 miles an hour with practically no wash. It would be independent of the tide because the machine would be powerful enough to disregard it. Such a service would take the place of those gallant old "penny steamers" operated by the L.C.C. for working-men which fell into disuse over fifty years ago. Such a service on the Thames would help to prevent congestion on the streets and revive the dream of that indefatigable champion of the River, Sir Alan Herbert. In my view, hovercraft have now reached the stage where they are fast, safe and reliable marine vehicles. They exactly fill the gap in carrying passenger freight which exists between an ordinary ship and an aircraft. It is a splendid craft in the form of S.R.N.3 and the V.A.3. But now we need larger successors to those vehicles to operate regular schedule services to show to the customers of the world. I think that this is too large a task for the N.R.D.C. alone. I am sure that the public would be thrilled if such a service could be started and that the Government would receive great credit for the comparatively modest investment of £1£ million, which is all that I think that it would cost. We should be modernising Britain and finding fresh export fields for our inventive genius. Mr Mark Woodnutt (Isle of Wight): I wish to thank my hon Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr Gresham Cooke) for giving me the advantage of two minutes of his Adjournment debate to say a few words on this subject, about which I feel so strongly because the Isle of Wight, my constituency, is the home of the hovercraft. Of the four companies which have done all the research and development in getting Britain ahead of the rest of the world on this project, two are in the Isle of Wight. Westland Aircraft's Saunders Roe Division carried out all the original research and development which was later taken up by Denny and Vickers and by Britten-Norman, also on the island. I pay particular tribute to Britten-Norman which has developed its cushion craft with no financial help from the Hovercraft Development Corporation and has sold the first commercial craft. We have got ahead of the world in this development, and we have to keep ahead. The fact, as my hon Friend said, that we have now granted licences to two Japanese firms and to the United States, means that they will go into production and will be competing with us in selling hovercraft in the rest of the world. We have to devise a means of assuring that this wonderful vehicle which we have produced is sold. Where do we go from here? The answer is that we must have a vehicle that we can demonstrate to show that it does operate successfully. When I am not in this House, my normal job is persuading foreigners to buy British machine tools. Whenever I have to persuade them I have to show the machines actually working, or people will not buy them. We have to be in a position to show them the hovercraft working. The only way to do that is to set up regular scheduled services. I am very pleased that my hon Friend suggested that such a service should be in the sheltered waters of the Solent because that would also help my constit uency in its transport problems. I suggest to my hon Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade that, in view of the fact that the Minister of Trans port is hoping to close all the island's rail ways, he should get a great supporter in him because if we had a hovercraft service it would make the railways far less im portant. Combined Effort This is a venture of considerable size and it needs a lot of capital. When a firm has just produced a new project it must recover what it has spent on research and development in its first few sales, which means that the machine is very expensive. I suggest that the Board of Trade should direct the Hover craft Development Corporation—I know it wishes to do so—and actively encourage it to participate in a private enterprise venture—and I assure my hon Friend that there will be one—to run a service in the Solent. The extent to which it could participate would be either by guaranteeing the amount required for the original craft or at least putting in funds to cover the research and development expenditure so that the machine is not made too costly to run economically. We have looked into the figures of running a service from the mainland to the Isle of Wight. I can assure my hon Friend that a regular service could be economically viable if the price of the machine were reasonable. If he could get together the Hovercraft Development Corporation anc the various private enterprise bodies in terested in doing this, he would do a greai service because then we would be able tc show foreigners machines operating. ty« would sell them and keep Britain ahead ir hovercraft development and also increase our exports to the markets of the world. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr David Price): I should like to congratulate my hon Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr Gresham Cooke) on choosing for debate this after noon the future of marine hovercraft. This is an important subject in which I am sure the hopes of many of us lie. With the intervention of my hon Friend the Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr Woodnutt) and my own reply, plus the fact that so much of the hovercraft development is taking place on Southampton Water and the Solent, we may say that this is almost a Hampshire occasion, for my hon Frieno the Member for Twickenham has a home in Hampshire. There is no doubt that the development ol the hovercraft has caught the imaginatior of many of us. In the hovercraft we see ar entirely new method of propulsion, which I remind the House, could have a land use as well as a marine use, although the marine application has earlier prospects ol success. Government View As hon Members know, the hovercraft makes use of a new concept of propulsion, which is obtained by the establishment of a cushion of air beneath the craft. This principle of the air cushion as a method of propulsion was worked out by a private inventor, Mr Cockerell, who, I am glad to say, has been able to develop his ideas, largely as a result of the interest and support of the National Research Development Corporation. As the House will remember. in 1958 the National Research Development Corporation formed and financed a com pany, Hovercraft Development Ltd, knowr as H.D.L., to develop hovercraft. The company instituted a programme of ad vanced research and development anc placed a contract for the design and manu facture of the first experimental hovercraft which was completed in June, 1959. Since then, H.D.L. has been collabora ting with a number of United Kingdom firms—four to be precise—in the develop ment and testing of a range of prototypes and carrying out various research and project studies. The second generation of hovercraft has now been built and has undergone trials. As hon Members know, some of them have been subject to experi mental operational use in ferrying passen gers on selected routes. The potentialities of amphibious hovercraft have now been demonstrated. Some of the collaborating firms have already shown their confidence in the commercial future of these craft by announcing their plans for the third genera tion of hovercraft. These will be much larger than the present models, and their larger size should make them more attrac tive commercially. The progress of this revolutionary pr°' 28
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
