United States Navy
The United States Navy initiated the SES model test program in 1960. By 1963, a 10-ton test craft called the XR-1 was designed and built to test the surface effect concept. The first version of the XR-1 used fixed plywood seals at the fore and aft ends of the captured air bubble section. A jet engine providing 1700 pounds of thrust was used for main propulsion. A separate 110 horsepower (82 kW) gas engine was used to drive lift fans, and also to power out-drive units that were used for off-cushion slow-speed maneuvering. During the first year of testing, the XR-1 was fitted with more powerful main propulsion and flexible fore and aft seals were tested as well.
The XR-1 was also used to test the concept of water-jet propulsion. The ship was modified in 1964 and equipped with gas turbine engines driving the water jet propulsors. The ship's weight increased to 17 tons.
Read more about this topic: Surface Effect Ship
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states and/or navy:
“I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian chief.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as “right” in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as “brute force.””
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
When time is old and hath forgot itself,
When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
And blind oblivion swallowed cities up,
And mighty states characterless are grated
To dusty nothing, yet let memory
From false to false among false maids in love
Upbraid my falsehood.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Give me the eye to see a navy in an acorn. What is there of the divine in a load of bricks? What of the divine in a barber’s shop or a privy? Much, all.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)