![]() ![]() “They ran on and off a lot,” said Capt. Tony DeFrias, ACU-4′s commanding officer, after watching LCAC-101 and LCAC 102 make the 6-mile run from off Cape Henry, where the Carter Hall dropped them off, to Little Creek. Traditional landing craft stay in the water, lowering a ramp that lets Marines and their vehicles roll ashore, hopefully without getting wet.ĪCU-4 sailors on the new LCAC-100s last week completed one of the tests needed before the Navy formally took delivery of the vessels, seeing how they managed leaving and returning from the Little Creek-based USS Carter Hall. “It just pushes you back into your chair,” said Petty Officer 1st class Jacob Juberville, who’s responsible for the engines as flight engineer on one of the first two LCAC-100s - “landing craft air cushion,” Navy-speak for the hovercraft that skim just above both water and beach to land Marines and their equipment on hostile shores.ĭelivering the two newest LCACs to Assault Craft Unit 4 next to the beach at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story, the five-strong team of enlisted sailors who run each demonstrated a key feature - hovercraft can move over the line between water and land without a bump. The hovercraft has a variety of names: aeroglisseur in France, Luftkissenboot in Germany, ground effect machine in the USA, surface effect ship, skimmer or air cushioned vehicle (ACV), and the Hovercraft Museum is the only museum in the world dedicated to showcasing this unique invention.(Tribune News Service) - You can feel the differences in the Navy’s newest hovercraft when the pilot moves the L-shaped throttle handle at his or her left hand forward, and the LCAC-100 speeds away from the well deck of an amphibious ship at 35 knots. Hovercraft are here to stay and our museum shows off a half century of innovation in design with professional and amateur builds of this great British invention! In the USA around 100 hundred tonners are being built to replace and accompany the older military craft! Whilst few are used presently in passenger role this is a potentially enormous re-emerging market and so hovercraft are enjoying a come back. Today most countries have a hovercraft somewhere and many militaries and coastguards use them daily. In recent years hovercraft have enjoyed a renaissance and there is now a £30 million industry in the UK alone. It is only in recent times that these less developed countries have been able to afford these new craft that they need for multiple transport tasks.īy 2000 the British patents on most hovercraft had lapsed and suddenly anyone could build and buy craft without 10% going to the UK treasury. Most of the places they were needed were areas with less developed infrastructure and were the poorer regions of the world. Fortunately in the 1980s with new cost-effective craft running on diesel and constructed with welded aluminium hulls, the hovercraft re-established itself. By the end of the decade the fuel crisis saw the doubling of running costs and hovercraft became less cost effective. The Sixties and Seventies saw hovercraft develop worldwide with gas turbines and riveted aircraft technology and prove themselves as true amphibians in many new roles. ![]() With Sir Christopher strapped to the bow to provide stability the SRN1 flew the English Channel from France to England soon after its launch, and it paved the way for giant car carrying craft within ten years. Ship andĪircraft builders alike were soon making amphibious all-terrain vehicles that hovered over land and water. ![]() ![]() Soon after Sir Christopher Cockerell’s idea literally took off. By 1958 the SR-N1 was being built with Government support and this “boat” was suddenly fully amphibious, unlike predecessors such as John Thornycroft’s attempt to make a boat move on an air cushion in 1897. By placing two tins one inside the other and reversing the connections on a hair-dryer he was able to show that annular jets of air form an air cushion to reduce friction and enable boats to travel faster. In his Norfolk boatyard he later put his mind to this problem and set up Ripple Craft. Aware of D-Day and Normandy landings he thought about how to get troops dry-shod and safe up a beach fast. The “hovercraft” is a word and an invention that Dr Christopher Cockerell patented in 1954 after working for Marconi, where he helped to invent radar. ![]()
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