At a 1917 HM Seaplane training school and commissioned as HMS Daedalus a Royal Naval air service base in 1939, it was the busiest airfield on the South Coast of England in 1944 on D-Day. {The airport remains and is known as Solent Airport.} Today on the front of the site at Lee on Solent overlooking the Solent where the seaplane ramp runs down to the sea is The Hover Craft museum. The museum dates back to 1988.
The first practical design for hovercraft was a British invention dating back to the 1950s. The idea of the modern hovercraft is most often associated with Sir Christopher Cockerell he built and tested several models of his hovercraft design in Somerleyton, Suffolk, during the early 1950s.
The Hovercraft museum has over 50 crafts ranging from small one-person crafts to the largest commercial car-carrying hovercraft ever built.
Princess Anne SRN4 MK3. 300tones over 55 metres long can carry 418 passengers and 60 cars. Built-in 1969 she is the only remaining example of this mammoth hovercraft which was used to cross the English Channel.
SRN4 car deck.
Passenger Lounges.
21 ft propellers were a world record!
SRN4 cockpit Hovercraft travel is a flight deck the person in charge is a pilot.
Another large Hovercraft at the museum is the BH7 built for the Navy in 1969 she flew to the Artic Cycle and back.
Some of the other craft in the museum.
Continued Reflections from my World. 