A Tale of Two Airships - R-100 & R-101

[Phil Perry]

 

R100 at the mooring mast at Cardington

 

The story of the R100 and R101 airships

 

A passage to India

 

‘The controversy of capitalism versus state enterprise has been argued, tested and fought out in many ways in many countries, but surely the airship venture in England stands as the most curious determination of this matter.’ So wrote Nevil Shute Norway, better known as Nevil Shute the novelist, in his autobiography Slide Rule in 1954 – and he knew what he was writing about, since he had been personally involved in this venture.

 

The British had never been successful in airship construction. Spurred on by the German Zeppelin raids of World War I, they had built rough copies of their own, but they had little idea of what they were doing. In 1921, when the experimental airship R38 broke in half during trials over the Humber estuary, killing 44 people, the enquiry found that no calculations at all had been done on the aerodynamic stresses on her frame.

 

‘R’ stood for rigid. The Zeppelins and the British airships had a rigid frame of metal girders, usually of Duralumin, an aluminium alloy, covered with doped cotton canvas. Inside this hung a row of huge hydrogen-filled gasbags supported on a harness of wires, intricately rigged to avoid chafing and holing them. This was long before the invention of flexible plastics, and the bags were made of ‘goldbeater’s skin’, a kind of very thin leather made from the intestines of oxen, the pieces pressed together while still wet so that they adhered.

 

Despite repeated failure, in the 1920s the British government was determined to set up airship communication as a means of reaching the distant parts of the Empire. It took at least 17 days to sail to India in the fastest liners. Aircraft were small and dangerously unreliable, and their short range required a chain of airstrips to be built along their route, often in possibly hostile countries.

 

Under the Conservative governments of Andrew Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin no fewer than nine committees debated the feasibility of the project. It was decided that, on economic grounds, the airships should be very large, with a maximum weight of 90 tons, providing 60 tons of useful lift (some of which would be taken up by the weight of fuel and crew). They would be capable of carrying 130 to 150 passengers and 10 tons of mail, with a cruising speed of 63 mph. It was planned to reach Delhi via Egypt in 74 hours. Six airships were to be built, each making the journey twice a week.

 

No sooner had this been decided that the government fell, and was succeeded by the Labour administration of Ramsay MacDonald, under which a further committee inevitably decided that it was against socialist principles to allow private firms to profit from such a lucrative project, and that it should be handled by public enterprise. After much wrangling a compromise was reached. The Air Minister, Lord Thomson, set up the Imperial Airship Scheme, under which two competing prototypes would be built, one by private and one by public enterprise. These airships were to be known as R100 and R101.

 

The Labour government soon fell in its turn, but the decision stood. Although now out of office, Lord Thomson was to remain a fierce enthusiast of the R101, with consequences that will be described later. He had been ennobled by Ramsay MacDonald, and had taken the title of Baron Thomson of Cardington – the site of the vast hangar where R101 was to be built.

 

The building of R100

 

She was designed and built by the Airship Guarantee Company, a subsidiary of Vickers, at Howden in Yorkshire where there was an existing airship hangar. At this time the chief airship designer at Vickers was none other than Barnes Wallis, who would later design the Wellington bomber. He took on the young Nevil Shute Norway as his chief calculator.

 

R100 was an elegant craft in the ‘teardrop’ shape thought at the time to be the most aerodynamically perfect, with a rounded nose and a long pointed tail. She was 719 feet long and 133 feet in diameter, and as set up for her maiden voyage weighed 102 tons empty, slightly above the stated limit of 90 tons, with a useful lift of 54 tons, not quite the 60 specified. Her most noticeable feature was that Barnes Wallis had used only 16 longitudinal girders in the frame, far fewer than used in the successful Zeppelins. The fabric covering was stretched flat between them, giving her an angular look. Each girder was a lattice based on three Duralumin tubes 4 inches in diameter, and they were linked by seventeen transverse frames. There were only thirteen types of component in the whole structure, which was braced with wire cables. At this time Wallis had not yet invented the ‘geodesic’ frame construction he was to use later for the Wellingon, with its extensive use of rigid triangles, but it was his work on the bracing cables that gave him the idea for it.

 

 

R100 under construction at Howden

 

One of the specifications for the two airships was that they should not have petrol engines. It was thought that the heat of India would bring 100-octane aviation fuel dangerously near its flashpoint. The original plan was to power R100 with newly designed engines running on a mixture of hydrogen and kerosene, but the development of these was so slow that they were abandoned. The next idea was to replace them with Beardmore Tornado diesel engines, as were to be used in R101. These straight eight-cylinder engines, theoretically delivering 650 bhp, were essentially double versions of four-cylinder engines that had been designed for Canadian railway locomotives. Diesel engines are always heavier than their petrol counterparts, but weight is actually an advantage on a railway, giving better traction. Although lightened to some extent, the Tornado engines were still impractically heavy at over 3¾ tons installed weight each, and the design team wisely abandoned them and, ignoring the specifications, fitted six Rolls-Royce Condor V12 petrol engines, each also giving 650 bhp from a fraction of of the weight of the diesels. They were installed back to back in three engine pods under the hull, one engine pulling, the other pushing. The Condors, predecessors of the famous Merlin engine, were secondhand but performed well; later they were replaced with new ones. Two of the pusher engines were fitted with reversing gearboxes so that the airship could move backwards.

 

Work proceeded slowly. After the R38 crash the Air Ministry had required thorough calculation of stresses on the huge and complex frame, and in the days before computers these took a very long time. The old shed was in a very run-down state, with a great pile of hen’s feathers at one end where a vixen had had her den. It was refurbished, but it always leaked. Condensation formed on the frame in summer and ice in winter, causing corrosion so that it had to be varnished. The whole operation was performed on a minimum budget, mostly with hand tools.

 

In contrast, the construction of R101 at Cardington was eased by modern conveniences supplied by a generous government. There was a joke among the staff there that when one of the R100 engineers at Howden bought a car, construction was much speeded up because they could use its tool kit.

 

So R101 was finished first, making her first test flight on 14 October 1929. The results were disquieting, but were hushed up by the Air Ministry press department. A few facts emerged in the newspapers. When the R100 crew learned that R101 had only 35 tons of useful lift, they did not crow at their opponents’ failure. As fellow engineers, they had a feeling of foreboding.

 

R100 was ready to fly by the end of November 1929, but windy weather kept her in the shed until just before dawn on 16 December, when it was calm enough for her to be ‘walked out’. This tricky operation required 500 soldiers to haul her out slowly, guiding the vast airship with ropes. There was a bare two-foot clearance between the hull and the door frame and one touch would have torn the covering, making it necessary to haul her back in for repairs. But it was successfully completed.

 

Vickers were not allowed to conduct test flights of R100. The contract specified that the airship should be tested by an Air Ministry crew, the same people that were testing R101, under Major G.H. Scott, who had the cumbersome title of Assistant Director (Flying) Officer in Charge of Flight. In fact these people behaved with impeccable neutrality.

 

As soon as the airship had been walked out and swung round to point away from the shed, half a ton of water ballast was released from the bow and another half ton from the stern, and she rose into the air.

 

The flight to Canada

 

The first flight was to Cardington, from where subsequent tests were conducted. It went without incident except that one of the engines developed a cooling leak and had to be shut down. When they arrived, they found the crew at the mooring mast surprisingly incompetent, and had to back off and circle round three times before the airship was latched on and moored.

 

Next day, after overnight engine repairs, came speed trials. Everyone was astonished when R100 reached 81 mph; it was probably the fastest airship of all time. There was a downside to this unexpected turn of speed. At over 70 mph, airflow around the hull built up standing waves of alternate low and high pressure which caused the large fabric panels to bulge in and out. In fact the fabric on the hull held throughout the life of the ship, but later in the trials a zone of high pressure around the elegant tapering cone aft of the tail fins caused the lightly built structure to collapse. The tail cone was not a loadbearing component and was simply removed, leaving R100 with a bobtailed look but not affecting her performance.

 

R100 covered at least 7000 miles in British trials, performing to everyone’s satisfaction. The original contract specified that she should now make a flight to Canada, so off she went on 29 July 1930 under the command of Major Scott. There were minor leaks in two gasbags, soon mended, and as they neared the St Lawrence River the fabric on the upper fin tore, leaving a large hole. One of the great advantages of airships over aeroplanes is that you can stop and get out to mend such things, and soon a party of riggers, secured by safety lines, was climbing around fitting a large sheet of cotton canvas over the hole.

 

She passed Quebec at 6pm local time on 31 July and headed on to Montreal in a thunderstorm, where a strong updraught caused violent pitching, causing the crew’s supper to slide off the table in the central saloon. Bits of food were found as far forward as frame 2. Norway reckoned that for that to happen, the airship must have been nose down at an angle of 35°. Two tears opened in the fabric of the starboard fin, but apart from that there was no serious damage. They moored at Montreal at dawn, having averaged 42 mph on a journey against the wind on which they had had to stop for several hours to repair the upper fin.

 

 

The saloon of R100

 

The crew were given a tremendous reception, and a comic song about the airship was sung by Madame Mary Rose-Anna Bolduc. After a few days while the damaged fins were repaired, R100 then went on a day’s tour around Ottawa, Toronto and Niagara falls, carrying a large number of Canadian passengers, and returned to Montreal.

 

One of the engines developed a gearbox fault and had to be shut down. It was found that, although spare engines had been shipped from Britain, they had forgotten to include the derricks on which they were slung to fit them into the pods, so it was decided to return to England on five engines – no great matter, as they would now be travelling with a following wind.

 

R100 left on 13 August and reached Cardington after an uneventful flight of 57½ hours. She was walked into the great hangar next to the one holding R101, on which work was still proceeding feverishly. She was never to fly again.

 

Next: The story of R101

 

Tachybaptus 2018

 

Going postal blog.

 

 

[Methusala]

Nevil Schute's "Slide rule" is an absolute must read. Don

 

 

[Oscar]

And there is a lot of good background stuff on the R100/R101 story - particularly the R101 crash - in James Leasor's 'The Millionth Chance'. The R101 project was an unmitigated disaster all the way through a combination of bureaucracy, politics and management, while the R100 was just about exactly the opposite.

 

The scale of these things is just immense - I've been in the Cardington hangar, and they (seriously!) get cloud forming under the roof in some conditions!l

 

 

[Neil_S]

Have you seen the half propeller from the R101 at the Shuttleworth Collection? Massive!

 

 

[Oscar]

From indistinct memory, (I don't have Leasor's book on hand), a test prop on the R101 test engine broke loose, due to the huge torque pulses of the diesel engine, broke through its 'chain mail' safety cage and the hangar wall, and was found some vast distance away - perhaps as far as a half-mile, though that could be hugely incorrect.

 

The engines on the R101, for maneouvering, had to be stopped and then re-started in reverse if they needed reverse thrust for docking etc. IIRC, each engine had a small 'starter' engine with a gearbox to spin the diesel up in the desired direction, and that required a crew member to climb down into the engine pod (via an exposed ladder!) and throw the gearbox on the starting engine. The starter engines were petrol-powered (thus negating somewhat the requirement for no petrol aboard!) but I think their petrol was stored in the engine pods themselves - which ran at very high temps in continual operation.

 

Due to aerodynamic effects, the 'tail-fin' control surfaces on all the rigid airships, were very, very ineffective. Due to the HUGE hole in the air these things created, I believe that even at full-speed - maybe 65-70 knots - you could stand on the tail fins in at most a 'gentle breeze'. I THINK that the R101 had an 'observation deck' on top, where one could promenade probably without losing your hat! A lot of the vertical attitude control was by varying power / dumping hydrogen from the appropriate multiple bags spread along the interior / dumping ballast from the multiple containers. Either of which options immediately reduced the surplus of control options. Horizontal control by varying engine power.

 

The VAST surface area contributed problems of its own. Static electricity build-up was so huge that they needed to drop an earthing cable before it would be safe for the ground handlers to grasp the mooring cables. I seem to remember a segment in the Leasor story, where one of the senior engineers tackled a ground handler to the dirt as he rushed forward to grab his cable, thus saving his life. ( I think the Hindenburg disaster was attributed to static igniting the Hydrogen, but I may well be wrong there.)

 

The saga of the R101 maiden flight and crash is a terrifying read. It was basically out-of-control and fated to crash mid-way across the Channel, having failed monumentally to even gain decent flying altitude, in atrocious weather. Plus, the covering skin - which had had to be entirely replaced - was suspect due to the doping methodology used, and started to tear apart somewhere over the Channel, dumping large quantities of water inside. The R101 was a dead-dirigible-walking before it unclipped from its mooring mast.

 

In a small, personal aside - but to perhaps give an idea of the size of the damn things - when I was at Cardington, I was chatting with the manager of the facility. He told me that they'd had real problems with the environmental control of the hangar - it has (or at least, then had) a largely glass roof and is perhaps the world's biggest 'glass-house', with summer temps going up to ridiculous levels. The safety aspect of having anybody working on large sheets of glass that were over 50 years old, had stumped them - until someone came up with the bright idea of using a crop-spraying helicopter as a spray-gun to coat them with white paint.

 

Again - to give a sense of scale: the R101 was only about 100 feet shorter than the Titanic..

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

There was an awsome doco on ABC TV a few years back about the age of airships. For a decade the Germans conducted successful and safe intercontinental service in them. I was most impressed by the 1929 world trip of the Graf Seppelin, which carried many celebrities of the day, including Australian explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins.

 

 

[facthunter]

They still fly some in Switzerland I think it is.( maybe not rigid but not sure) Think they use the name Zeppilin. Helium is essential for safe operation. A bit subject to the vagaries of the weather. As Heavier than air, planes are but more so. Controlling these things must have a real challenge. Tilting engines common now. Vectored thrust.

 

 

[Phil Perry]

They still fly some in Switzerland I think it is.( maybe not rigid but not sure) Think they use the name Zeppilin. Helium is essential for safe operation. A bit subject to the vagaries of the weather. As Heavier than air, planes are but more so. Controlling these things must have a real challenge. Tilting engines common now. Vectored thrust.

Indeed Nev,. . .I have been involved in the launch and recovery of a 'Small' one. . . an advertising airship which is occasionally launched from Halfpenny Green airfield in the UK Midlands. ( EGBO ) It has suffered a couple of minor disasters where some of the incredibly expensive Helium gas was lost. . . . The Pilots tell me that they are a real Biatch to control in anything above very light winds. I've only had a ride in one on a completely calm day. . .Neutral buoyancy can be a problem when winds are too strong. . . The rotten bugger of a Pilot wouldn't let me touch the controls. . . Unsurprisingly, when you consider that the cost of the Helium in that envelope is probably around the same price as a an average 3 bedroom home and land. . . . . "What ? ? ? You let a Pleb fly it ?. . . . Into a barbed wire fence you twat ? ? ? ?"

 

 

[Phil Perry]

Anyway,. . .Tachy will be doing the R-101 soon, so you can pick the bones out of that when I repost it on here. . . .

 

 

[Litespeed]

As a side note the big Zeppelin fire was caused by the nitrate dope which is extremely flammable. Yes so is hydrogen but that flashes off, the nitrate made it a fireball waiting to happen.

 

This is from a good documentary on the disaster.

 

 

[Oscar]

Indeed Nev,. . .I have been involved in the launch and recovery of a 'Small' one. . . an advertising airship which is occasionally launched from Halfpenny Green airfield in the UK Midlands. ( EGBO ) It has suffered a couple of minor disasters where some of the incredibly expensive Helium gas was lost. . . . The Pilots tell me that they are a real Biatch to control in anything above very light winds. I've only had a ride in one on a completely calm day. . .Neutral buoyancy can be a problem when winds are too strong. . . The rotten bugger of a Pilot wouldn't let me touch the controls. . . Unsurprisingly, when you consider that the cost of the Helium in that envelope is probably around the same price as a an average 3 bedroom home and land. . . . . "What ? ? ? You let a Pleb fly it ?. . . . Into a barbed wire fence you twat ? ? ? ?"

Not to pre-empt the next chapter to come... but with reference to my earlier comment that the tail-surfaces are very ineffective at providing control in the usual sense we think about them: (from the Wiki article: R101 - Wikipedia ):

 

Flying around 800 ft (240 m) above the ground, it passed over Alexandra Palace before changing course slightly at the landmark clock tower of the Metropolitan Cattle Market north of Islington, and thence over Shoreditch to cross the Thames in the vicinity of the Isle of Dogs, passing over the Royal Naval College at Greenwich at 20:28. The airship’s progress, flying with her nose pointing some 30 degrees to the right of its track, was observed by many who braved the rain to watch it pass overhead.[68]

 

That is why I used the term 'horizontal control' rather than 'yaw'. The damn things would point mostly according to the side area exposed to the prevailing wind on track. Anybody who has ploughed a muddy field in a 2WD tractor will know that the steering is useless, you dance the independent brakes to maintain directional control. Possibly similar, is sailing a 'Colin Archer' style yacht - long keel with a small rudder - upwind, where you have to play the main and jib to vary the position of the centre of pressure of the combined sail area vs. the centre of lateral resistance of the underwater profile. You can flog the tiller all you want and the thing will take no bloody notice.. (possibly why the aphorism 'Gentlemen don't sail upwind' started..)

 

 

[facthunter]

Period pictures of ballons (unpowered) always show a flag billowing in some direction. so you don't need motors Phil. DUH!. Santos Dumont used to fly across PARIS to have a cup of coffee and controlled the pitch of his long balloon by walking along it. The rest of you are WIMPS. if Santos Claws his way through the sky so easily .Nev

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

...Santos Dumont used to fly across PARIS to have a cup of coffee and controlled the pitch of his long balloon by walking along it...

...and that was long before the Wright Bros.

 

 

[facthunter]

But the Wrights flew powered heavier than air craft that remained in the air by reacting with the air and was controllable in 3 axis. A very different creature. Nev

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Of course, Nev. I was just pointing out how far that Brazilian bloke had progressed down a different path to powered flight.

 

 

[facthunter]

Santos Dumont was a person of great talent. Especially in support of flying. No one person did everything. Knowledge gradually accumulated. and was built on.. Interesting that the first heavier than air flight (powered) was only a bit over 110 years ago. Go to a modern Airport and wonder at where we are. Giant flying blocks of flats are taken for granted. Nev

 

 

[Phil Perry]

Santos Dumont was a person of great talent. Especially in support of flying. No one person did everything. Knowledge gradually accumulated. and was built on.. Interesting that the first heavier than air flight (powered) was only a bit over 110 years ago. Go to a modern Airport and wonder at where we are. Giant flying blocks of flats are taken for granted. Nev

Whilst I was still in training for my first 'Proper' Pilot licence in Vic,. . .I did a Navex to Deniliquin, and since there wasn't a C-150 which hadn't gone 'Tech' (both in the maintenance hangar,) I was asked if I wanted to do a convo onto the 172, and if competent, to take that on my Nav excercise. . I jumped at the chance and did a 1.5 hour conversion. I fell in love with the aeroplane, the fact that it was quite young, ie, it had that, New Car smell about it ( ! ) was nice too. . .It's reg was VH-EJM. . .(and I nearly Bought it later but that's another long story. . .)

 

After landing at Deniliquin and having a good Breakfast, I sat next to a bloke who was an Airline pilot, I guess he would have been in his late thirties then, but who had packed it in for GA flying instruction as He said he just couldn't get on with being away from his home and young family for long periods. This was the first time I ever heard your phrase 'Flying Blocks of Flats'. . . this was his description of his ex job. I wanted to be any kind of Pilot for as long as I can remember Nev, but I couldn't pass the RAF eyesight tests, even though my academic qualifications were more than sufficient. . . having a slightly lazy left eye. I am still happy though, to have gotten away with the flying that I have done. . .

 

I only knew that pilot bloke for around 45 minutes, I think his name was Graham. . .not sure, but Qantas was mentioned as his previous employer and he was from Sydney. . .Nice chap. . .Must have been, as he'd witnessed my bloody crappy landing in gusty hot condx and said I'd done a good job considering my time on type ! ! ! He said the 172 was a 'Lovely' aircraft and just like driving a bus. . .

 

 

[facthunter]

Phil. II had an experience in a "new car smell" C-172 at a high temp and high altitude aerodrome. They not only smell different and look neat but fly just that bit better than a tired dented flap strained older version. This operation was so marginal the tired version would not have done it. I have often commented to young enthusiastic people about flying and airlines. ( When asked). If you want to "fly" planes Instruct buy/build your own that you fly how, when and where you want to. If you are doing Airlines long haul you are lucky to get 3 landings a month and you are stuffed when you are doing them and likely to be required (and happy) to use autoland.. The 16 nights away from home ruled out Qantas for me, but ended up doing average of about 9 anyhow..I regularly meet retiring blokes I know and they have all had enough..Nev