Hoverspeed hovercraft set to be destroyed

sailorman

sailorman

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Two famous hovercraft are set to be destroyed in Hampshire.
The Princess Margaret and Princess Anne Hoverspeed vessels carried passengers between Dover and France for 30 years.
They were taken out of service in 2000 and have since been stored at Lee-on-Solent.
Contractors aiming to develop the land to create new homes now plan to demolish them.
The nearby Hovercraft Museum hopes to save one of them for the nation.
BBC South Today's Lewis Coombes reports.
[h=2]Read more[/h]Petition to save last cross-Channel hovercraft

 
Of course one should be saved, they are an important milestone in the evolution of transport; in their day every bit as futuristic as Concorde.

The ' pettion ' link just goes to the South Today piece, I'll google around to try and find if there is one.
 
As far as I can see, the Hovercraft Museum has stirred this up because, without these two craft, the few visitors they get would probably stay away. And, I believe, the car deck of the Princess Anne is used as a museum display area. The finances of the Hovercraft Museum are very poor; it seems possible they wouldn't have survived much longer anyway.

The comparison with Concorde is amusing - those who have travelled on both may disagree.
 
pvb said:
As far as I can see, the Hovercraft Museum has stirred this up because, without these two craft, the few visitors they get would probably stay away. And, I believe, the car deck of the Princess Anne is used as a museum display area. The finances of the Hovercraft Museum are very poor; it seems possible they wouldn't have survived much longer anyway.

The comparison with Concorde is amusing - those who have travelled on both may disagree.
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Well a hovercraft never burst into flames & crashed, killing all o/b
 
I've been on the development Concordes at Yeovilton and Duxford, and had one pass beneath us in flight, if that counts...

I think most engineers of my and older generations will agree these Hovercraft were something special, and a very important step.

The acid test for this must be ' What would Gerry Anderson, creator of Thunderbirds, have made of it ? ' - and I reckon he probably loved it ( the only time I remember offhand in Thunderbirds where such cross-Channel transport crops up, they had a futuristic car carrying transport aircraft doing exactly the same as they did in the 60's with the Bristol Freighter - a method which made the hovercraft look the bargain of a lifetime !

Hovercraft may not have worked out as the answer to everything, but they were a lot more successful business - wise than Concorde.

Personally I think the real lemon among such futuristic ideas is the hydrofoil; has to go dangerously fast to work ( even in bad vis' etc, I was a passenger in a Condor job between the Channel Islands - playing Space Invaders dodging yachts in thick fog ) and as soon as it's throttled back the draft - and drag so inefficiency -increases massively.
 
pvb said:
The comparison with Concorde is amusing - those who have travelled on both may disagree.
Click to expand...
Fully agree. I never travelled Concorde but do remember my channel crossing on one of those hovercraft to be a deeply distasteful experience, which I never repeated. Dreadful things best forgotten, not having funds being spent on it.
 
Seajet said:
Hovercraft may not have worked out as the answer to everything, but they were a lot more successful business - wise than Concorde.
Click to expand...

Can't see how you'd reach that conclusion. There were only ever a handful of commercial hovercraft, compared with 14 Concordes, and both operated for around 30 years - the Concorde was operated very profitably.
 
pvb said:
Can't see how you'd reach that conclusion. There were only ever a handful of commercial hovercraft, compared with 14 Concordes, and both operated for around 30 years - the Concorde was operated very profitably.
Click to expand...

Concorde only operated profitably after the massive development costs were written off; it's a wonderful bit of kit but a complete turkey financially - of course some of that can be blamed on the American ' not invented here ' attitude which led to campaigns against it re sonic booms, but lots of other countries banned supersonic overflights too - so it could never be used as intended, some might say a lack of foresight.

People who moan about the vibration and noise of the car carrying hovercraft concerned are forgetting it got them, their family and car across in a fraction of the time, with much less sick-inducing motion, of a conventional ferry.
 
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pvb said:
Can't see how you'd reach that conclusion. There were only ever a handful of commercial hovercraft, compared with 14 Concordes, and both operated for around 30 years - the Concorde was operated very profitably.
Click to expand...

Remind me ... how much did BOAC pay for its Concordes, and how much did we pay?
 
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