Spotlight hovers over Lee-on-the-Solent museum

March 1962 and a naval rating signals Halt to more conventional traffic as the Saunders-Roe SRN1 crosses the seafront at Lee-on-the-Solent and returns to HMS Ariel, now the site of the Hovercraft Museum. Roles such as anti-submarine warfare, air-sea rescue and mine countermeasures were foreseen. Pictures courtesy Amberley Publishing

Along the seafront at Lee-on-the-Solent, opposite the slipway, lies an entrance to what was HMS Daedalus but now leads to the Hovercraft Museum '“ the only hovercraft museum in the world.

It is fitting that it is situated on the site of Daedalus where hovercraft were evaluated and maintained. Lee is synonymous with planes, in particular sea planes and it is also very much the home of the hovercraft.

After the first cross-Channel crossing by a hovercraft in 1959 there was a revolution in hovercraft design and development, both commercial and military,

Within 10 years there was the mighty SRN4 which crossed the Channel regularly in less than 40 minutes and which carried more than 400 passengers and 60 cars.

January 1963 and the SRN2 operates over pack ice in Wootton Creek, Isle of Wight. Icing tests at sub-zero water and air temperatures following the coldest night for more than 60 years, showed that the crafts operation at normal speeds and hovering heights was not impaired.

Military hovercraft had developed and an army hovercraft squadron was formed, 200 Hovercraft Squadron RCT, based along the road at Browndown.

Small craft appeared as many hovercraft manufacturers and developers appeared along the Solent.

The Mackace hoverplatform was based at Funtley; the Pindair Skima range was based at Gosport; the mighty Saunders Roe and later British Hovercraft Corporation, at Cowes.

As hovercraft developed, right at the centre was Lee.

June 1994 and the SRN4 Mk2 Swift is pulled up the slipway to her final resting place at the Hovercraft Museum. She was broken up in 2004.

In 1961 the British Interservice Hovercraft (Trials) Unit (IHTU) has been established at Daedalus (known as HMS Ariel from 1959 until 1965) with personnel drawn from the Army, Royal Marines, Royal Navy and the RAF. From 1969 it became known as the IHU

Extensive use was made of the widened and improved slipway as hovercraft came and went.

The purpose of this unit was to help service personnel gain experience of hovercraft and help their makers develop them and evaluate any military potential.

As a result a wide range of craft, commercial and military, passed up and down that slipway as they were put through their paces in the Solent.

From the top: an SRN6, a BH7 and a VT2 (Vosper Thornycroft 2) speed along the Solent. An historic picture from 1982 as the three craft travelled in close formation along the Solent and past Daedalus slipway at Lee at the closing of the Naval Hovercraft Trials Unit based at HMS Daedalus.

A superb new book by Jim Gray, The Hovercraft, traces the history of this craft which still amazes and which we, in the Portsmouth area, take for granted with its regular cross-Solent passages from Southsea to Ryde. People from other parts of the country still come to Southsea and gawp at the strange amphibian which ‘flies’ across the waves.

Gray has used the wonderful archive at the museum, with many rare and unpublished images, to great effect in this 96-page book. It’s published by Amberley at £14.99.