Hovercraft SRN5 is tested as a patrol and transport craft.

CUs of Captain Peter Beacon at the controls as the hovercraft moves off. CUs of the radar and radio operators, and various shots from the top of the hovercraft cabin, looking aft to the pusher-propeller and to the lush vegetation of the river banks. LA from interior of the cabin to the RM gunner closed up in his cockpit. SRN5 goes alongside at Seradong Minor, a small outpost about 20 miles inside the river complex at Tawau - while there the radio is used. MS from the shore as the hovercraft skirt is inflated, and the radar operator casts loose the bow line - the hovercraft makes off down river - it returns, passing the camera at speed, and then turns round again and, hugging the bank, comes back to the jetty. View in the cabin from behind the pilot's position during a rainstorm - the windscreen wipers are operating - the pilot is Lieutenant Christopher Stafford, RN. Cut to CU of chief aircraft artificer and two Naval airmen working to repair tears in the skirt of the beached hovercraft. Dark underexposed sequence showing a briefing in the ops room by Major Roger Harris, CO of the Hovercraft Unit. Armourer ships the hovercraft's 7.62mm machine gun on its simple pintle mount in the open turret. The hovercraft crew leave the briefing tent, and the hovercraft is started up and moved to the loading point where troops are embarked. Cut to hovercraft on a stony beach near an outpost some 33 miles from Tawau where the relief troops are disembarked and stores unloaded. SRN5 then returns to base. Sequence showing the hovercraft approaching a second outpost on a sandy beach and disembarking more troops. A native boy climbs up a palm and the local villagers offer the crew fresh coconut milk to drink - in return the pilot, Captain Stewart Syrad, Royal Marines, takes some of the village children on a short ride. One of the soldiers returning to base carries two large freshly caught fish. Back at Tawau the hovercraft is washed down. Sequence taken from an assault boat as SRN5 goes alongside HMS Albion to pick up a cargo net suspended from the ship's crane, and to embark troops from scrambling nets thrown down from Albion's lower decks. Sequence showing SRN5 alongside the jetty at Kalabakan, including aerial shots of the hovercraft leaving the village and returning to Tawau - the aerials show how at speed the hovercraft seems to skid round bend in the river, the whole craft slewing round as it changes direction. Cut back to Albion - troops re-embark from the hovercraft, which then passes round to the stern of the carrier where a rope ladder has been let down. A final sequence shows troops embarking at Tawau and leaving the craft at Kalabakan - the hovercraft then departs, alarming some of the local children with great clouds of spray as it manoeuvres and gets underway.

Notes

Technical: badly affected by damp throughout

Summary: the rather limited transport capabilities of the hovercraft are emphasised when it goes alongside Albion, but its main operational drawback goes unrecorded here - it was apparently extremely noisy