The flying saucer snapped up by US army
Last updated at 20:44pm on 7th April 2007
The age of the British amateur inventor toiling away in his humble garden
shed lives on - and Geoff Hatton is proof of it.
The former hovercraft engineer has designed and patented a flying saucer
from his workshop in Peterborough that has grabbed the imagination of the
American military establishment.
.. Video: Now watch the amazing flying saucers in action
"My son said it was a bloody silly idea,' said Mr Hatton. "Now I've proved
it works, he says sorry, he was wrong."
The 68-year-old has won a contract with the US government for his 3ft-wide
contraption, a cross between a hovercraft and a helicopter. It is being
considered for surveillance sorties.
"Unlike a helicopter, though, this is aerodynamically neutral and you can
bump into walls and not smash the rotor,' said the inventor.
"And, unlike a hovercraft, you can fly it as high as you want."
The dome-shaped object is powered by an electricity-driven propeller on
top that pushes air over the outer surfaces, and has controllable flaps.
The device, which was rejected by the Ministry of Defence, was funded
partly by a £43,000 development grant from the Department of Trade and
Industry five years ago.
The Americans are convinced that it has potential.
"It's a unique approach which lends itself to a surveillance platform,'
said Sal Gomez, of the US army's International Co-operative Programs
centre. "It could be useful in urban areas because if it bumped into walls
it could recover. This is just the earliest of days, like the Wright
Brothers."
Mr Hatton built his first model hovercraft for a church fete in 1964 and
later helped build them in Britain and Canada.
Divorced, he returned to England in 1979 and spent ten years as a market
trader in Clacton.
"I was always going on to people about how hovercraft could become flying
saucers," he said.
"They got fed up with it and said, "Get on and make one then!" So I did."
He set about turning his workshops into his own mini-Area 51s - the secret
US military testing sites in the Nevada desert.
Mr Hatton won backing from friends, including business consultant David
Evans. He said: "It's an idea that you look at and say to yourself, "Do
you want to be like the first record producers who turned down The
Beatles?"' Dr Holger Babinsky, an expert in aerodynamics at Cambridge
University, also offered his expertise.
Geoff's Flying Saucers - the original name for his GFS Projects company -
are based on an aerodynamic principle that has been around for nearly 100
years.
Known as the Coanda Effect, after a Romanian jet-engine pioneer, the
principle is today used primarily in helicopters that have no tail rotors.
Patents covering Mr Hatton's design were filed in March 2005 and the first
controlled flights took place that year.
Mr Evans said: "We can see a lot of prospects besides the military.
Farmers in America already use unmanned aerial vehicles to inspect crops.
Then there's search-and-rescue, aerial surveying and getting close to
roofs."
Photo and video clip of saucer at --
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=447317
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