<DOC>
<DOCNO>
649
</DOCNO>
<TITLE>
the hovercraft - a new concept in maritime transport .
</TITLE>
<AUTHOR>
crewe,p.r. and eggington,w.j.
</AUTHOR>
<BIBLIO>
trans. roy. inst. naval arch. 1960.
</BIBLIO>
<TEXT>
  the hovercraft is the first operational british
project in the ground-effect machine field .
although there has, for a number of years, been
a tentative searching after the principles
underlying such machines, it is only now that their
possibilities as commercial transport and
service craft are beginning to be developed .
  since the hovercraft is a new vehicle, the appearance
of the saunders-roe sr-n1, a manned
experimental craft, excited considerable public attention
and there have been a number of
descriptive articles in the press .  papers of a more
technical type, on ground-effect machines,
are now beginning to appear and it is to be expected
that these will rapidly increase in number,
especially since american interest in both the commercial
and defence fields is expanding fast .
  the authors of the present paper have, therefore,
concentrated attention upon features
about which they had something personal to say, and
which they consider to be of particular
significance for assessing the possibility of the
hovercraft becoming important in maritime
transport .  these features are ..-    the
hovercraft as a fundamentally new
      principle in the transport field .
    the powering requirements and resistance
      characteristics .
    the likely operating costs of hovercraft
      in comparison with other forms of maritime transport .
in addition, relatively brief descriptions of
the history and the current work being undertaken
on the ground-effect machine and of the design,
construction, and testing of the saunders-roe
sr-n1 are provided .  the final section discusses
outstanding problems and some future
possibilities .
</TEXT>
</DOC>
