Smye-Rumsby was the first company in the world to provide specialised radar services to the largest passenger hovercraft to operate between Dover and Calais. The radars, which were substantially designed for much slower ships, had to be modified to work at the 60 knots operational speed of these unique craft.
We worked on all the SRN4 hovercraft both at Dover and Ramsgate. When the time came to ‘stretch’ the Princess Margaret and the Princess Anne craft, they were taken to British Hovercraft Corp in Ryde, Isle of Wight, where new radar systems were installed and ‘sea-trialed’.