I've never thought of that, were these hovercraft powered by radial aero engines like some OTL versions?
Hoevercraft can land their troops/armour well inland by using marshes, rivers, tidal flats and the like which would be handy. I doubt they could be used against the Atlantic wall outside of a major combined assault though.
Dont think it said in the book
However, found this on Wiki.... I know, I know, not excatly a reliable source but it is interesting...
The first fully functional, rigid-walled hovercraft was designed by Austrian
Dagobert Müller von Thomamühl[1] and built by the Imperial
Austro-Hungarian Navy (Kaiserliche und Königliche Kriegsmarine) "Seearsenal" (Naval base) at Pola. The 'Versuchsgleitboot - System Thomamühl' was launched on
2 September 1915[2] and was 13 metres (43 ft) long, 4 metres (13 ft) wide, displaced about 6.5
tonnes (6.4
LT/7.2
ST), had a crew of five men, and had a top speed of over 32
knots (59
km/h/37
mph). By 1916 it was undergoing testing as a fast-torpedo boat and was equipped with two torpedoes, one Schwarzlose machine gun and several 6-kilogram (13 lb) "water-bombs", intended for anti-submarine use. It had two propellers, each of which was driven by two 6-cylinder 120-
horsepower (89
kW) airplane engines, a fifth 4-cylinder 65-horsepower (48 kW) engine was used to blow warm air under the hull, creating the "air-cushion or hover" effect. After wide ranging full scale sea trials, the vessel was eventually scrapped in 1917 and the engines returned to the naval air-arm (Luftfahrttruppe); no further testing or research into hovercrafts was undertaken by the Imperial Austro-Hungarian navy during the period up to its eventual capitulation.
Finnish engineer
Toivo J. Kaario, head inspector of Valtion Lentokonetehdas (VL) airplane engine workshop, began to design an air cushion craft in 1931. He constructed and tested his craft, dubbed
pintaliitäjä (Surface Glider), and received its Finnish patents 18630 and 26122.[
citation needed] Kaario is considered to have designed and built the first functional ground effect vehicle, but his invention did not receive sufficient funds for further development.
The first to give scientific descriptionBANKHEAD of the ground effect and to provide theoretical methods of calculation of air cushion vehicles was
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in his 1927 paper "Air Resistance and the Express Train".
[3][4] Since then
Soviet engineer
Vladimir Levkov began to develop air cushion vehicles. In the mid 1930s, Levkov assembled about 20 experimental air-cushion
boats (fast attack
craft and high-speed
torpedo boats). The first
prototype, designated L-1, had a very simple design which consisted of two small wooden
catamarans that were powered by three engines. Two M-11 radial aero-engines were installed horizontally in the funnel-shaped wells on the platform which connected the catamaran hulls together. The third
engine, also an air-cooled M-11, was placed in the aft part of the craft on a removable four-strut
pylon. An air cushion was produced by the horizontally-placed engines. During successful tests, one of Levkov's air-cushion craft, called fast attack L-5 boat, achieved a speed of 70 knots (130 km/h/81 mph).
The first technically and commercially viable hovercraft was invented and patented by the
English inventor
Christopher Cockerell in 1955.[
citation needed]
However, there had been numerous previous experimental attempts to design vehicles using the ground-effect principle, including prototypes built by Russian and German naval designers in
World War I. In the US during
World War II,
Charles J. Fletcher designed his "Glidemobile" while he was a
United States Navy Reservist. The design worked on the principle of trapping a constant airflow against a uniform surface (either the ground or water), providing anywhere from ten inches (254 mm) to two feet (250–600 mm) of lift to free it from the surface, and control of the craft would be achieved by the measured release of air. Shortly after being tested on Beezer's Pond in Fletcher's home town of
Sparta Township, New Jersey, the design was immediately appropriated by the
United States Department of War and classified, denying Fletcher the opportunity to patent his creation. As such Fletcher's work was largely unknown until a case was brought (
British Hovercraft Ltd v. The United States of America) in which the British corporation maintained that its rights, coming from to Sir
Christopher Cockerell's patent, had been infringed. British Hovercraft's claim, seeking US$104,000,000 in damages, was unsuccessful. In a case brought in 1985, Patent agents BTG successfully sued the US Department of Defence, being awarded $6 million in damages in 1990.
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