Cockerell’s theory was that instead of just pumping air under the craft, as Thornycroft had, if the air were to be instead channelled to form a narrow jet around the perimeter of the craft, the moving air would form a momentum curtain, a wall of moving air that would limit the amount of air that would leak out. This meant that the same cushion of high-pressure air could be maintained by a much smaller engine; and for the first time, a craft could be lifted completely out of the water. Cockrell tested his designs across the village green opposite his house in the Broadland village of Somerleyton in Suffolk. He tested his theories using a vacuum cleaner and two tin cans. His hypothesis was found to have potential, but the idea took some years to develop, and he was forced to sell personal possessions to finance his research. By 1955, he had built a working model from balsa wood and had filed his first patent for the hovercraft, No. GB 854211. Cockerell had found it impossible to interest the private sector in developing his idea, as both the aircraft and the shipbuilding industries saw it as lying outside their core business. He therefore approached the British Government with a view to interesting them in possible defence applications. We celebrate his invention with a scale model of the S.R.N.6 hovercraft …
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December 12
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