Hovercraft Development
1958 The National Research Development Corporation (NRDC) agreed to finance Christopher Sydney Cockerell and Saunders-Roe to construct a prototype hovercraft.
1959 NRDC formed a wholly-owned subsidiary called Hovercraft Development Ltd (HDL) with Dennis Hennesey as chairman and managing director and Cockerell as a director and technical consultant. Their first office was in Cockerell's house, White Cottage, in Victoria Grove, East Cowes, within a few hundred yards of the Saunders Roe design team at Osborne.
1960 the company moved to The Grove, at Hythe, on the west shore of Southampton Water.
The Saunders Roe manned model, SRN1, was shown to the press on 11 June 1959. Trials were successful, and on 25 July the craft crossed the English Channel. The craft's hover height was soon found to limit its performance in wave heights of double the hover height, and it was fitted with peripheral flexible extensions, soon nicknamed "skirts".
Several full-scale man-carrying craft were built, both amphibious and sidewall, for a variety of applications. A special team was set up to investigate hovercraft trains, and an experimental track was set up near Cambridge. The movement on cushions of air of very large loads such as redundant gasometers and smaller 1 ton loads was investigated. One team produced hospital beds for burns patients. The new company filed more than 200 patents.
The success of SRN1 led to the demand for HDL licences to build hovercraft, which were granted to Saunders Roe, Vickers, Folland, and Cushion Craft in the United Kingdom, Bell in the United States, and Mitsui and Mitsubishi in Japan. A licence was refused to Russia.
NRDC wanted to encourage the UK companies to merge their hovercraft interests into a single company. Cockerell vehemently opposed this and eventually resigned.
NRDC formed the British Hovercraft Corporation from Saunders Roe and Vickers, with two NRDC directors on the board.
See Also
Sources of Information
- Obituary of Christopher Cockerell, ODNB