FMC LVHX-2

The LVHX-2 was an experimental Landing Vehicle, Hydrofoil built by the Food Machinery Corporation (FMC) for the US Marine Corps, which wanted much faster amphibious vehicles for the run-in to a landing beach.

Background

The programme grew out of hydrofoil work by the Miami Shipbuilding Corporation, whose hydrofoil HALOBATES was completed for the Marines in 1957, and of its "Flying DUKW": a DUKW fitted with foils, an autopilot and a Lycoming T-53 gas turbine that exceeded 30 knots in trials off Miami, against about 5 knots for a normal DUKW. The Lycoming Division of AVCO then built the LVHX-1, and FMC the competing LVHX-2.

Design

Both vehicles were built to the same requirement: an aluminium hull about 11.6 m (38 ft) long, able to carry a 5-ton payload at 35 knots (about 65 km/h) and to drive on land on wheels that retracted for foil-borne running. While the Lycoming machine had fully submerged foils needing automatic height control, the LVHX-2 used simpler surface-piercing foils at the front with a single submerged foil at the rear.

Outcome

Trials showed that foil and wheel retraction and high-speed gas-turbine propulsion added too much complexity and cost for the gain in water speed, and tyre problems were also reported, so the Marine Corps abandoned hydrofoil landing vehicles.

The folder also holds a chapter of the official history of USMC development from 1900 to 1970, which records FMC's earlier role in redesigning Donald Roebling's "Alligator" in welded steel as the LVT(1); FMC's plants built 11,251 of the 15,654 LVTs produced during the Second World War.