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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 0810.PDF
SUPPLEMENT TO FLIGHT International MARCH 1 964 Air-Cushion Vehicles DESIGN • COMPONENTS • APPLICATIONS BIG BUSINESS-AND PLEASURE TOO in this issue 32 International News 35 Cushion Pressure and Economics 38 Off to the New World 39 Hovercraft Channel Link 43 Saltings and Marshland 44 Hovercraft Legislation; Letters Editor-in-Chief Maurice A. Smith DFC Editor H. F.King MBE Technical Editor W. T. Gunston Managing Director H. N. Priaulx MBE VOLUME 4 NUMBER 21 Qiffe Transport Publications Ltd Dorset House, Stamford Street, London SE1Tekphone: Waterloo 3333 (Telex 25137) telegrams: Flightprcs London Telex Annual subscriptions Home 18s. Overseas 18*. Canada and USA $3 Branch OfficesMO Corporation Street, Coventry Telephone: Coventry 25210 £jps; Edward House, New Street, Birmingham 2 Telephone: Midland 7191 ^^ MO Deansgate. Manchester 3 lefefhune: Blackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595 |?3 Hope Street Glasgow C2 telephone: Central 1265/6 "I Marsh Street, Bristol 1 Telephone: Bristol 21491/2 Ne* York, N.Y.I?iT* lkiaDer * Company (Publishers) Ltd ill hroadway 6 p :>one: Digby 9-1197 liffe Transport Publications Ltd 1964.<«sion to reproduce illustrations and i ress can •* Brtnui only under written"^ ABrie extract» or comments may be »ath due acknowledgement. ADDRESSING THE HOUSE OF LORDS On March 4 Lord Silkin said: "I believe that the Buchanan Report has seriously underrated the potentialities of such inventions as the hovercraft, the helicopter, the monorail, the transport of goods by pipes and other developments not yet thought of but which could largely and quickly replace existing forms of travel and transport, just as the internal com- bustion engine replaced horse-drawn vehicles over half-a-century ago. "In my school days I used to travel to school on a horse-bus. Even then, there was a certain amount of congestion; but I never visualized that within a few years we should be in an era of motor buses. If we ever thought then of dealing with traffic congestion in the towns, we should certainly not have thought in terms of motor cars and engines; and the same thing may well be applicable today, but to a greater extent. Already the hovercraft to carry 500 to 600 passen- gers, or the equivalent weight of goods, is a practical proposition ..." Lord Silkin may well have had in mind the Westland SR.N4, the type of vehicle concerned in the ambi- tious proposal for an ACV Channel link to which a large part of this issue is given over. This 150-ton craft could handle any of several combin- ations of passengers, cars, coaches, and lorries, the purely human cargoes being listed by Westland as "566 (seated), 660 (seated and standing)"! But it is not so much N4's versatility that promises to render it a "practical proposition" as its remarkable sea- keeping ability, ranging from 4-5ft seas at 65-70 knots (conditions pertaining in the Channel on 90 per cent of occasions) to 13ft seas at 15-20 knots (one or two days a year). The Westland Channel scheme is, for the present at least, a paper proposition, but in respect of the Solent we are able to announce the formation of a company to operate passenger and cargo/passenger ser- vices with 120/150-ton ACVs in the spring of 1967. Services across the Bristol Channel would follow. Meanwhile, in their smaller sizes ACVs will be going to work in many parts of the world, and we print in this issue a picture of the nearly complete SR.N5, first of a production line of ten. Among the applications foreseen for N5 are search and rescue and fire-fighting—in which contexts should be considered the authori- tative views on civil defence appli- cations summarized overleaf. There are times when development of the ACV business appears to languish, and other times when it seems breathtakingly swift. As re- cently as last September we printed an article suggesting hovercraft racing —and got our legs quietly pulled for such whimsy. Now the first race has been run in Australia. It seems to have been something of a soap-box Derby, but it does appear that pleasure as well as business can be expected from air-cushion riding. ACV—1
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