You don’t have to be James Bond to travel on a flying boat!

If you’ve seen James Bond floating over the land and sea in vehicle that flies through the air, you might have thought this was pure fantasy. It’s not.

Flying boats are a reality. And they’ve been so for decades. Hovercraft, which are flying boats that literally float in the air have been in use since the late 1950s. The first practical use of hovercraft was for ferrying passengers across the English Channel between Southern England and France. 

Hovercraft feature a revolutionary technology for transporting travelers and heavy loads of cargo across all types of surfaces (land, sea, river, lakes and snow). They are used in diverse applications, including military, public transportation, recreation, and sport. They were a huge success in Britain when they were first introduced for public transportation.

Around the world hovercraft come in different sizes, can be as small as one-man operated hovercraft and as big as giant hovercraft that can carry 50 cars along with 400 passengers, as in a jumbo jet!

If you are a fan of the James Bond movie franchise, then I bet you would remember James Bond, the British spy and hero of the world-famous James Bond movie series, maneuvering a hovercraft across land or water in the movies. 

The first hovercraft to be featured in a James Bond movie was in the 1971 movie starring Sean Connery, Diamonds Are Forever, in which Bond travels in a hovercraft (named Princess Margaret) from Kent in England to Amsterdam in the Netherlands across the English Channel. 

Following this, a Gondola convertible hovercraft was featured in the 1979 James Bond movie starring Roger Moore, Moonraker. In that movie, Bond converts his Gondola in the sea to a hovercraft at the press of a button before he glides over the roads. Now that was a bit of a special-effects stretch. We don’t have vehicles like that yet.

More recently, Die Another Day, the 2002 James Bond Movie starring Pierce Brosnan, also featured three hovercraft: two Osprey 5s  craft and a Slingsby SA220 in an action-packed scene with a hovercraft chase – Bond rides one of the Ospreys and relentlessly chases two other hovercraft in the North Korean demilitarized region. 

So, what is a hovercraft?   

A hovercraft is any amphibious ‘air cushion vehicle’ (ACV) that is capable of hovering over land, water, mud or ice for transporting people and cargo with ease; it has the characteristics of a boat, plane and helicopter! 

History records that the world’s first practical hovercraft was designed and built by a British engineer and inventor, Christopher Sydney Cockerell, in 1955.

Cockerell built his first hovercraft for Britain’s Saunders-Roe Private Limited (and its related firms, such as The British Hovercraft Company). 

So, while Cockerell’s invention was the first practical hovercraft that went into production, there were other experimental craft that preceded it. 

Another engineer, an Austrian named Dagobert Muller Von Thomamuhl, built the world’s first air cushion boat (ACV), which the Germans called Luftkissengleitboot (meaning, you guessed it – hovercraft!), way back in 1915. This vessel had some practical limitations; it needed some depth of water to operate on water and couldn’t travel over land. Thus, it wasn’t considered a practical invention. 

Step back in history, and we find the first historical record of air cushion concept vehicles can be traced to the 1700s where the Swedish scientist Emanuel Swedenborg talks about hovering vehicles.

Another interesting person that’s worth a mention here is John Isaac Thornycraft, a ship builder and owner of a ship building firm—he is widely accepted as the first person in the world ever to research ACV concepts. He is best known for his patented test design of a hovercraft in 1870. The lack of robust engines during his era acted as an impediment to bringing his test design to life. 

So, Christopher Sydney Cockerell of British origin takes the credit for bringing the first ever practical hovercraft to life and he’s regarded as the father of hovercraft technology.

Over the years there have been many technological advancements in hovercraft technology since the time it was first invented in 1955. 

So how does a hovercraft fly? 

A hovercraft is an airborne boat that works on the principles of lift and thrust much like a plane or a helicopter, but with a subtle difference. It cannot fly more than a few feet over a flat surface.

At its simplest, a hovercraft design comprises of the following key components: engines, propellers, fans, skirt, and rudders.

The hovercraft hovers or glides over surfaces by trapping a cushion of air underneath its hull with the aid of a central fan that is powered by a propeller engine, with air blowing downwards into its ‘skirt’ (the array of rubber sheets that surround the bottom of the craft), creating a high-pressure area below and a low-pressure area above.

This results in an upward lifting force that’s required to hover or float. 

A rear fan (that’s propelled by an engine) is used to blow the air in the backward direction. This results in the craft moving forward.