Here’s a PR film from the US Navy, circa late 1960’s, extolling the virtues of their hydrofoil vessels. Hydrofoils, like jetpacks and flying cars, are old technologies that always seem to scream “future;” but unlike jetpacks an flying cars, hydrofoils have actually entered service. Just never with the US military, with the exception of a handful of the Pegasus class patrol bats (in service from ’77 to ’93). Cool as they were, they just never seemed to quite catch on… they made for some very fast ships, but at considerable expense, and a whole lot of maintenance. And I suspect there was always some paranoia about just what would happen if a hydrofoil ran into a log or a boat or a whale while at top speed.
The film includes some spectacular footage, and some just awful background music.
While hydrofoils had their day fifty years ago, the somewhat similar SWATH (small waterplane-area twin-hull ) concept has popped up much more recently. Witness the “Ghost” from 2014: