Hovermania rules!

Jun 14 2008 by Andrew Baldwin, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

IT was more than 40 years ago and hopes were high that the hovercraft was the coming thing.

The first working model had been produced in 1956 and the first full-size test craft built three years later.

This was the transport of the future, enthusiasts believed.

So there were great expectations when the world’s first hovercraft trade show was opened on June 15, 1966 by Admiral of the Fleet Lord Mountbatten of Burma.

Up to 4,000 visitors had passed through the doors by the time the exhibition closed four days later at Browndown, near Gosport in Hampshire.

The aim was to promote sales of the hovercraft and there was a great boost on the first day when a £1m Defence Ministry order was announced.

Government officials said they were buying two prototypes, a fast patrol boat capable of 75 knots and a logistics support craft.

It seemed as though the hovercraft was to enter a golden age.

The world’s first passenger hovercraft had begun between Wallasey on the Wirral and Rhyl in 1962, cruising at 60 knots and powered by four 400hp gas turbine engines.

The summer service – a joint venture by British United Airways, Vickers Armstrong and BP – was never expected to make a profit.

The main aim was to prove the viability of a hovercraft service and to study costs.

The craft was at Rhyl when a storm tore it from its moorings and smashed it against the sea wall.

It was later shipped to the US for military evaluation, then brought back to the UK.

Its eventual fate was to be pulled apart by a demolition team and consigned to the deep waters of the Solent off the Isle of Wight.

But what was seen was enough to encourage people interested in commercial operation.

Confidence was such that a cross-Channel service was launched between Ramsgate and Calais just two months before the hovercraft show opened in 1966.

Hoverlloyd began operations using small passenger-only hovercraft, but later switched to a larger model capable of carrying 30 vehicles and 254 passengers.

Then Seaspeed began a service between Dover and Calais, where it shared facilities with Hoverlloyd.

Crossing times were typically 40 minutes between Ramsgate and Calais, which compared favourably with crossing times of 90 to 100 minutes for the traditional ferries on similar routes.

But hovercraft operations were prone to disruption and cancellation during bad weather. However, this was eased over time by various modifications to the craft.

But operations became increasingly uneconomic with rising costs for fuel and maintenance.

The Ramsgate service ceased in 1982 and the Dover service in 1993 after a long rundown.

Today the only commercial hovercraft service in Britain is between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight.

Hovercraft are still in use by the Royal Marines and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, but the dream is virtually over.

However, there’s always the hover lawnmower, a lasting legacy of the technology.

MANCHESTER was the scene of a massive IRA bomb which injured 200 people in the city centre on June 15, 1996.

The bomb exploded at about 11.20am on Corporation Street, outside the Arndale shopping centre.

Police were praised for evacuating the immediate area close to the bomb and preventing any fatalities.

The most seriously injured person was a 42-year-old Lancashire woman who needed 300 stitches in her face after seven hours of surgery.

One of the luckiest survivors was a heavily pregnant woman thrown 15 feet through the air by the shock wave.

One insurance expert put the cost at over £100m.

Manchester Assistant Chief Constable Colin Phillips said the device was at least as big as the lorry bomb of 1,000lb of fertiliser-based explosive which devastated London’s Docklands in February that year.

Police revealed that the van used for the Manchester bomb was sold just hours before the blast. A motor trader in Cambridgeshire was paid in cash for the white Ford Cargo.

The force of the detonation in Corporation Street propelled wreckage from the vehicle up to half a mile.

Mr Phillips said: “The people who did this were absolutely evil criminals. It is a complete miracle no-one was killed.

“There was tremendous damage done and the blast travelled round corners.

“It is a scene of absolute devastation.”