Word: hydrofoil
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...Denison, built by Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. for the U.S. Maritime Administration, is the U.S.'s first high speed hydrofoil ferryboat. But in Italy, hydrofoil ferries are old hat. Neapolitans scarcely spare a glance any more for the sleek, 140-passenger aliscafi (winged hulls) that skim out across the Bay of Naples four times a day on the tourist run to Capri 18 miles away...
...Italians comfortably out in front in commerical hydrofoil development is Carlo Rodriquez, 51, a tall, reticent Sicilian engineer whose Spanish ancestors settled in Italy 150 years ago. Since 1958 Rodriquez has turned out 42 hydrofoil ferries at his 500-man Messina shipyard. Today, his aliscafi wing between Venice and Trieste, thread the fjords of Norway, link Caribbean islands, and are about to begin regular service between Montevideo and Buenos Aires. Last year Rodriquez sold $3,100,000 worth of hydrofoils; this year, with $1,800,000 in sales so far, he expects to do substantially better...
Legacy from Adolf. A trip in a Rodriquez hydrofoil is like water-skiing in a bus. Projecting down from the ferry's trim speedboat hull are legs with winglike metal skis on the end. As the ship picks up speed, the hull rises out of the water and skims along on its skis. Because it has only the drag of the skis, a Rodriquez hydrofoil needs only half the power of a conventional boat to achieve the same speed. More important, its top speed is three times that of the average conventional ferryboat-which means that it can move...
...passenger PT 20, which is driven by a 1,350-h.p. Daimler-Benz V12 engine and will make up to 40 knots, and the 140-passenger PT 50. which has two V-12s and does 37 knots. Both were designed by Austrian Engineer Friedrich Lobau, who built his first hydrofoil for Hitler's navy and his second as a prisoner of war in Russia. (The Russian model, he now says...
...carefully constructed in such a way that it sank the first time he demonstrated it to Soviet naval officers.) After the war, Lobau ran out of funds trying to develop a commercial hydrofoil in Switzerland...