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In Germany the military potential for WIG boats was recognised and RFB was contracted by the German military to develop the X-114, requiring it to fly without ground effect as well as in ground effect. It became apparent that the conflicting requirements of a WIG boat and an aircraft lead to a compromise with little advantages and that the true power of WIG technology lies in staying close to the surface. Therefore the development was continued with the Airfisch family of WIG boats that were incapable of sustained flight without groundeffect. Meanwhile Hanno Fischer had taken over the project from RFB and he pursued Lippisch' work at his own company called Fischer Flugmechanik. Their two seat Airfisch 3 was a very successfull design, which has recently been scaled up to seat 6 passengers. This craft, the FS-8 will soon be series produced by a Singapore-Australian joint venture called Flightship.
While the Airfisch technology was being made ready for the market, Fischer was already working on the next generation of WIG boat with hovercraft technology to assist at take-off. The 2 seat hoverwing prototype HW-2VT has been successfully demonstrated many times and now development continues with a 20 seat version.
Although Alexeiev discarded the tandem wing principle after having tested the SM-1, the concept was later rediscovered by the German Günter J?rg. After many radio controlled models he succeeded in developing a stable WIG boat with two wings in a tandem arrangement, the first manned craft was the J?rg-II. The tandem WIG boat excels in simplicity and low cost and is the most boat-like of all WIG concepts. These facts may explain their initial success with boats up to 25 metres in length built. Unfortunately some technical and business related problems stood in the way of true commercial success.
The above are the most relevant developments in wigs sale history, but there have been many smaller projects around the world, some of which should be mentioned here. The Kawasaki KAG-3 was a WIG boat with water propulsion, but the project was abandoned due to stability problems. In the USA there have not been many projects that went beyond the drawing board. Especially Lockheed and David W. Taylor Naval Ship Research and Development Center (DTNSRDC) have conducted a lot of research work. DTNSRDC especially in the area of PAR. Some years ago a company called Flarecraft copied the Airfisch-3 and scaled it up. Due to their lack of expertise the Flarecraft L-325 was a technical failure, although the attention from the market and the media was overwhelming.