by David Aaron White

Created on: July 13, 2011   Last Updated: July 18, 2011

The earliest form of the hovercraft can be dated to 1915, when Lieutenant-Commander Dagobert Muller von Thomamuehl of the Austro-Hungarian Navy designed plans for a ship with a raised hull; the hull would be raised by a cushion of pressurized air that would reduce the hydrodynamic resistance on the boat, therefore allowing the vessel to travel faster through the water. Early that year, the lieutenant submitted his plans to the Austrian Technical Committee; the plans were later used to design a high-speed torpedo boat that could travel faster than 59 kilometers per hour, was armed with torpedos and machine guns, and was completely uninteresting to military officers at the time, leading to its de-commissioning towards the end of the First World War.

The next major stride in the development of the hovercraft came in 1931, when Finnish engineer Toivo J Kaario designed a more modern contraption of a lift engine that could push air against a flexible material in order to create lift off of a surface. Kaario never raised the funds to build anything more than a prototype of his design; shortly thereafter, Soviet engineer Vladimir Levkov created several craft that relied on the same principles as von Thomamuehl’s (some of which could surpass 120 kilometers per hour) and continued to design vehicles until the start of the Second World War.

The modern hovercraft can be largely attributed to Christopher Cockerell, an English engineer who, in 1956, created the first commercially-produced hovercraft. Cockerell designed a vehicle that would move over the water’s surface by utilizing a layer of air, trapped between the underside of the vehicle and the water that would reduce resistance on the vehicle from the water, therefore allowing the vehicle to travel faster through the water. The idea seemed simple enough, so Cockerell tested his hypothesis by placing a small tin can inside a larger tin can and using a hairdryer to blow air into them; the downward thrust increased when one can was inside the other, meaning that the layer of air created aided the thrust produced. Armed with a successful experiment, Cockerell would go on to patent over 30 of his own ideas, even becoming knighted in 1969 for his efforts and accomplishments.

Cockerell could never secure military funding for his craft because the Air Force and Navy both had different classifications for the vehicle; ironically, Cockerell noted, “The Navy said it was a plane, not a boat; the Air Force said it was a boat, not a plane,” and the Army wanted nothing to do with the project. However, the National Research Development Corporation agreed to fund a full-scale model of his hovercraft, which would be called the Saunders Roe, Nautical 1, in 1958. The SR.N1 was launched for the first time on June 11th, 1959, and successfully crossed the English Channel before the end of that month, though the craft sustained irreparable damage due to the high velocity at which it was made to travel.

Once Cockerell’s designs were perfected and able to withstand high-speed, it was implemented into commercialization. As early as 1962, small-scale ferry services were able to use hovercraft to transport people short distances, and hovercraft were eventually made available to the general public.

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