Having spent a year at Daedalus and 8 months out in Hongkong on the RN Hovercraft Trials Unit (NHTU) which followed on from the Intersrvices Hovercraft Unit (IHTU) maybe I can throw some light on at least the service side of "drivers". During my time on the Unit 1978-1980 we had the Boss who was a Commander RN ex-leader of Freds Five (Vixens I believe), the XO was a submariner who went on to be CO of HMS Speedy (the RN hydrofoil), then there was the training officer ex-jet jockey, an ex-canberra pilot, an exchange US Navy nuclear engineer and myself (the only helicopter pilot at the time - the Boss didn't like helicopter pilots until I showed him the error of his ways! The "navigators" were one officer observer, two aircrewman (at least one jungly), a seaman RP (radar plotter). The maintenance was all done by Fleet Air Arm guys ( a really great bunch!). We had 3 SRN6 hovercraft, the BH7 - which is still at Lee-on-Solent minus "the worlds largest driving airscrew" and the VT2 which used to be a "sidewall craft" until they turned the gearboxes over to point upwards and put an all-around skirt on it.
I had some interesting "adventures" out in Hongkong and managed to capture 199 Illegal Immigrants (IIs) during my time.......
Before I get really boring, back to the original question of Drivers or Pilots.... The civilian drivers were called Hoverpilots but the Navy titles depended on whether you were already a real pilot, in which case we called it driving, or a submariner/engineer/seaman in which case they called themselves "Pilots" as it was the closest they would ever come to being in charge of anything "airborne".
Having said that I have had an SRN6 completely airborne, if only for a few seconds (if I'd known about the couple sunbathing on the other side of the sandbar I might not have tried it!).
I fly over 539 Squadron Royal Marines daily and look down on their hovercraft and only yesterday there was a bright yellow civvy one outside the hangar at Mountbatten, must go and take a look.
On another note if there are any Ex-RN hovercraft people out there it would be nice one day -before we all die of old age- to get back in touch or even have a reunion!
Tony T