The Story of the R100 and R101 V: Finals

The R101 project was in a bad way.

The effort by the Royal Airship Works to construct an airliner had been troubled since R101's first flight the previous October. Now that her rival, the R100, had made a successful demonstration flight to Canada, it was impossible for R101 to do anything but attempt a similar flight. She was not ready for this. She had never been flight tested properly, both in the practical sense and in the sense she had not met various government requirements to be considered safe for such a flight. She was also not ready in that when R100 returned from Canada, R101 was in a shed in Cardington undergoing extensive refit. In order to give R101 the useful lift she would need to even fly in the tropics, she was being extended and given a 500,000 cubic foot lifting cell. She was also have most of her outer cover replaced, and her lifting cells replaced, and this work had to happen at a grueling schedule thanks to political pressure.

The Labor government of Ramsay MacDonald had invested in R101 literally and figuratively; R101 was supposed to be a showpiece of what government could do when put in charge of industry. Now that R100 had proven herself, so must R101, or else the showpiece would have failed. The Minister for Air, Lord Thomson, felt the same way, and had set a hard deadline for the efforts of the Royal Airship Works. Lord Thomson had always wanted to fly to India on R101, and as it happened, the Imperial Conference had been called in London later that October. Lord Thomson would make quite a splash if he arrived for that conference by HM airship fresh from India. So, R101 was going to fly by his time table. Any further delays would see the whole R101 project terminated.

So the men of the Royal Airship Works had a deadline they could not miss. Not getting the R101 flying to India would be tantamount to admitting their cheap and cheerful rivals in the R100 had built the better airship. As if this wasn't enough pressure, the Great Depression had started, and it was clear that ex-RAW personnel would be looking for new employment with millions of others newly unemployed.

Long story short: "R101 is flying to India or everyone is fired."

Panic at the Airship Works

When R100 returned to Cardington in mid-august, RAW had been working 24 hour days for a month and a half. The work was so intense, in fact, there's very little record from inside the Royal Airship Works; our man Nevil Shute is about the only person who got a look in during this hectic time.

Shute flew to Cardington on some business or other,  and met Squadron Captain Booth (Captain of the R100) there. Booth took Shute into a quiet office and showed him some square sections of outer cover. When Shute picked up one of the sections, it crumpled like a piece of burned paper. After learning to his relief that the samples from R101 and not R100, Shute learned the rest of the story. Apparently some glue had been applied to R101's cover in the hopes of strengthening it, and instead the glue reacted with the existing dope. Shute asked Booth if all of the affected cover had been removed, to which Booth only replied "they say it has." Shute - rightly I think - describes this as evidence of panic among the engineering staff. Both the glue's manufacturer and others (viz. the entire research apparatus of the British government) could have warned them beforehand that this would happen, but the engineering staff went ahead and did it anyway. Not only had the staff begun to panic, they had also begun to be secretive.

 [note: This anecdote originally appeared in part 3, but it happened during the September 1930 scramble; my mistake.]

Shute also reports that the morale at Cardington was lousy. All the reports agree that morale on the R101 project started very high, and began to decline once it became clear how flawed the R101 had turned out. After nearly a year of that trajectory, things were grim indeed. Shute reports that the crew of both airships were 'completely out of hand'. Both crews had been idle, and R100's crew was viewed as the enemy. Orders were followed only when it suited, and the atmosphere was one of cynical disillusionment. This atmosphere spread among the crews as well. Captain George Meager had said in July that he refused to fly in R101 unless ordered, and he was the start of a trend. Some of R101's crew were now after the Air Ministry to get danger pay, so unsafe did they perceive R101.This was the first in a whole series of gigantic red flags ignored by the Air Ministry.

By September 25, the mighty labor was at last done. R101 was whole and ready to fly again. Winds kept her in the hanger until October 1st, when she was walked to the mast. R101 was when she was launched the largest flying vehicle ever created, and R101 (+) was even larger. She had grown to 237m (777 ft), which when talking about vehicles is best described as like an ocean liner - even the Titanic was only about 40m (100 ft) longer. She had gained the long-awaited outer cover renovation, done in the traditional Zeppelin method. She also could boast of 5 engines usable in normal flight. If you remember, this used to be four, as the fifth engine had to be turned around for reverse due to engineering issues with the reversible propellers. This had been solved by taking two of the engines offline during flight and altering their engine timing so they ran backwards - an incredibly clunky fix for the world's most advanced airship, but I guess still better than having one engine be useless weight most of the time. The main question is how much the displacement boost cured R101 of her worst flaw - the fact that she was too heavy.

Post refit numbers suggest that R101 came close to meeting R100's useful lift. After much screwing around, I found what appears to be the authoritative word on R101's weight and lift statistics - it comes from the (spoiler alert!) inquest into the R101 disaster. I've no idea if these tons are in US or Imperial tons, I'm assuming the latter, as the numbers are slightly smaller than those usually cited.

Version            Gross lift(t)           Weight(t)                Net Lift (t)          Useful lift (t)
R101                 148.6                      113.6                     35.4                       5.4
R101 mod         152                         111.3                     40.7                      10.7        
R101 SiR          167.2                      117.9                     49.3                      19.3

 This number put R101 back in the game, at least on paper. 19.3 tons imperial is 21.6 tons US - still only 2/3s R100's useful payload of 30 tons. But this number came with a terrifying asterisk; it assumed that the lifting cells in R101 were gas-tight, and they were not.

In the (now protracted) struggle to avoid having to 'fess up to mistakes, the Air Ministry had decided to expand R101's lifting cells beyond original specification. Thanks to R101's unusual lifting cell suspension system, cells were already given to lots of movement and this change caused chafing in all the lifting cells, and very soon, holes. The brief flights of R101 post this decision revealed a ship that in theory gained 3 t useful lift, but in practice lost lift as she flew, even in perfect weather. So R101's theoretical useful lift only applied while she was still in her hanger. It declined once she left it for the last time. VC Richmond, the head engineer, analysed the problem after R101's summer outing. He emphasized the overwhelming importance of preventing holes, as his math suggested that a square inch of holes (that is to say, the total surface volume of all the holes in R101 equaling one square inch) would create a loss of 1 ton of lift every 12 hours. Since R101 developed 4-5 inches of surface area holes by the time she was hung up in the hanger at the end of July, she was loosing 4-5 tons of lift every twelve hours. Even setting aside the obvious safety problem, you can see that at that rate of loss it'd only take around four days for R101 to bleed of her entire useful lift. (Also Richmond assumed in this missive that R100 was suffering a similar rate of loss - since if R101 had this problem, it was a logical certainty the primitive R100 did. I can see why the R100 staff complained about dickatry on the part of the R101 staff.) This rate of loss and damage, let's remember, happened when flying in perfect weather, so anything that increased the movement of the lifting cells, like say, heavy weather would compound this loss. How much, nobody knew, because the R101 had done no bad weather flying. Speaking of unknowns, later analysis showed that the gas valves would vent if R101 rolled more than 5 degrees, so gas loss in bad weather was 2 unknowns, not one.

This was something the heads of RAW knew about, but were ignoring, as it couldn't be fixed on Lord Thomson's timetable, and the heads knew they would roll if there was another delay. When preparing for her India flight, the leaks in the lifting cells had gotten so bad that the hydrogen in R101's forward lifting cells was declining noticeably in purity. This would have cancelled the flight for R100, or any World War 1 German Zeppelin. The Germans had learned how important hydrogen purity was for safe operation, and would regularly hang up airships to drain and refill lifting cells to keep lifting gas as pure as possible. This was the second of the gigantic red flags.

The schedule for the newly reconstructed R101 was as follows:

1. 24 hour a test flight to make sure that things were shipshape.
2. Air Minister's flight to India.

The Royal Airship Works hoped that the test flight (singular) could do the long awaited top speed test. This would have been doubly important as R101's power had gone up thanks to five engines being available for forward thrust; she had never been run with five engines forward before. The 24 hour requirement was dropped because the Air Minister for Supply and research had been replaced by Lord Dowding, who had an engagement the next day that he didn't want to miss. R101 took off Thursday evening of the first of October. The flight lasted all night, with R101 flying in what VC Richmond described as "especially perfect weather", and docking at dawn Friday, having flown 16 hours. This flight test was so hurried that apparently nobody on it left a written record - we do know that the top speed test was not done, as one of the engines developed an oil leak and had to be stopped.

Speaking of hurried, Lord Thompson wanted to start the flight to India Friday evening, but was persuaded by RAW head Colmore that maybe he should wait a day so the crew (who had been working nonstop the past week) could have a rest. Lord Dowding helpfully suggested that the top speed test be rolled into the flight to India. Meanwhile, the two engineering professors who were supposed to be certifying that R101's structure was safe to fly had gotten back to RAW with all sorts of questions - the upgrade to R101 was rather more extensive than either of them had been expected. Just a few days previous, Prof Bairstow gave R101 a permit to fly over the telephone to the Air Ministry, with a paper copy showing up on the day of the flight. There was still the matter of R101's flight certificate. As R101 had only occasionally tried to complete the tasks laid out for the certificate many years ago, this could not be issued. This was, as well, as a big goddamn red flag - a legal issue - since airliners probably shouldn't be overflying other countries without proper certification.  So Lord Thomson, Minister for Air, issued the flight permit himself, on the basis of 'reports furnished' to the Ministry.

So, you got that? The people who were supposed to have outside objective guidance on if an airship was airworthy or not could just write the permit themselves if it was taking too long, so that is what they did.

Thomson had said in Parliament 'R101 is as safe as houses - except for the millionth chance.' He clearly believed this, and was acting entirely in character - he was getting the job done, regardless of the problems it caused other people. Previously, this had worked because the externalities he was forcing on other people were mainly labor related; if such an approach was in any way wise with a leading-edge aerospace project is something that escaped his lordship. He told Colmore if he, Lord Thomson, was late coming back from India, "Not only would no more money for airship work, it simply won't be asked for." He did, on this last Friday evening also said to the heads of RAW "you must not allow your judgement be swayed by my natural anxiety to get off quickly." Once again, clearly a natural politician.

What the crew thought about this is an interesting question. One of my sources is the book "But for the Millionth Chance", and the author paints such a portrait of looming doom a character in Moby Dick would find it laid on a bit thick. Even Ramsay MacDonald, the Prime Minister, is reported to have a premonition of doom as he sat down to dinner that night. In contrast, some other sources say that the crew was eager to go on the trip. I'm inclined to split the difference on these views. Clearly, some of the crew felt the R101 was a ticking bomb - apparently, some of the crew  forbade their families to see them off in R101, as they wanted 'to be remembered by them as they were at home.' 'Sky' Hunt, an officer with a fact-based view of R101, kissed his son goodbye, saying to him 'Goodbye, son. This old ragbag won't make it." Well give Hunt this moment for reasons that will become clear presently. It's also clear that the senior staff of R101 were 1) trying to think positive and keep a stiff upper lip, etc, while at the same time demonstrating clearly some worry about the upcoming trip.  WC Colmore had begun pressing for the construction of "emergency docking masts" in Malta and Iraq. (Some thought had been given to the construction of more mooring masts so smaller airships could fly the royal road to India, but this late emphasis on them shows even RAW's head was becoming less confidant of success.) Further evidence of this flagging confidence was the last minute weight purge. Crewmen could take 10 lbs of luggage with them, almost literally a change of socks, underwear, and a toothbrush. Biscuits were being removed from their tins, and the tins thrown away to save weight. It could be that the Head's anxiety was induced by worry about their jobs rather than R101's ability to fly, as the venn diagrams of those two positions overlap quite a bit.

 Someone who clearly was not worried about weight and dynamic shortcomings was Lord Thomson, who showed up with a ton of luggage. Literally. He thought the interior of R101 a bit sparse, so he'd brought along a thick blue carpet for the passenger gangway, running some 350 ft from the bow to the passenger area. He also brought along an antique Persian rug for the dining area. "A layer of dust an eighth of an inch thick on top of the airship is said to weigh a ton" one officer noted "so you can imagine what this means for our load." Thomson brought along a barrel of beer, cases of champagne, boxes of silverware and enough steamer trunks to inconvenience a whole formation of porters.

So while all that is being loaded, let's briefly review who was coming along. Lord Thomson, Minister for Air,  and his Valet, Mr. Buck. Sq. Leader W. Palstra, RAAF, for Australia.  The Director of Civil Aviation, Air Vice Marshall Sir W. Sefton Brancker. Major Percy Bishop, Chief Inspector AID. The director for Civil Aviation, India, Sq. Leader W. O'Neill. Also coming along were the heads of the Royal Airship Works: Wing Commander Colmore (RAW head), Major Scott (Operations Head), Lt. Col. Richmond, Chief Engineer, Sq. Leader Rope, assistant Chief engineer, Another member of the AID, Mr. Bushfield, and, a Mr. Leech (who we'll be hearing more from), foreman Engineer. The passengers, plus the crew complement put the total count to 56.

She had 25 tons of diesel fuel aboard, plus another 10 tons of this in ballast bags. This is rather unusual. In the First World War, British airships and blimps often did this - carrying fuel instead of water in ballast bags - as it gave them extra endurance. R101 could make Ismailia comfortably with 2/3rds of this fuel load (22 tons) assuming nothing major went wrong, but clearly somebody high up thought it'd be better safe than sorry. She also had 9.3 tons water ballast.

The plan for the flight was simple: first, overfly France, via Paris, Toulouse, and Narbonne, and then out over the Mediterranean.  Then, cut across the Mediterranean, over Malta to Egypt, and dock at the mast at Ismailia. Ismailia is a town on the Great Bitter Lake, in the middle of the Suez Canal. Here Lord Thomson would host a immensely fancy party with the Royal Navy, an affair usually done on a battleship. Much of Lord Thomson's luggage was in support of this party, since any party with Imperial in the title demands a decadence scare dreamed of by proles like us. R101 would then fly to India - I'm guessing by overflying Arabia, down the Persian Gulf, and approaching Karachi from the sea. This map gives the route:

I know this may shock you, reader, but one final thing went wrong: the weather. People had been writing the Air Ministry and RAW for a year saying "when you guys are doing flight testing, maybe you should do some bad weather flying, just so you know R101 can do that?" Well, there was a storm bearing down on England - heavy rain, gale force winds - but after that R101 caught a break: the forecast was for good weather and following winds all the way to India. Naturally that meant the un-flight tested R101 should have delayed takeoff; and naturally this was not done, possibly because the press was waiting for R101's departure. So, R101 cast off into the worst weather she had ever flown in.

As the weather was extremely poor, there are no photos of R101's final flight. This is one of the last known photos of R101, taken around 630 PM.

A Flight to Remember

R101 launched, or rather lurched, off to India in the early evening of October 4th.. When she let go of the mast, she was too heavy, and had to drop four tons of water ballast. Her locomotive diesels roared to life, and R101 exited into the gloom, like an actor vanishing behind curtains. The water ballast dropped was all forward, which only left her emergency ballast. This was significant, as her emergency ballast could only be dropped by a rigger at the front of the airship, rather than from the control car.

For those who don't remember: Airships of this era would set a 'pressure height' for their lifting cells. On the ground, an airship has lifting cells less than full, for as she rises, the cells expand as the air pressure drops around them. The "pressure height" is where an airship's lifting cells are fully expanded. Above that height, the cells will vent lifting gas to keep from straining themselves. R101's pressure height was apparently set to a very, very low: 1000 ft.  After dumping ballast at 'cast off' she rose to 1500 ft, and vented some 3 tons worth of lifting gas. She then returned to 1000 ft.

The flight was not a smooth one -the weather was causing a fair bit of roll in R101. Engineer Rope surmised that "she was bound to roll in weather, anyway" (another one of those things you usually learn in flight testing.)  Below, only the lights of cars and shops could be seen on this wet Saturday evening. R101 flew over London, and many people heard her engines, despite the now lashing rain, but only the light of her promenade could really be seen.

The passengers and big men of the airship works sat down to dinner - the Airship Heritage Trust has found the menu and the wine list  if you are curious - and after supper they found the rather chilly and empty main area lacking in something, so they retired to the more intimate smoking room downstairs. R101 had slowed down; initially on four engines, she was now down to three, as oil pressure started to drop on one of the after engines. Harry Leech and chief Engineer William Gent were consulting, but instead of being defend by noise they had to deal with a slippy ladder in the rain, with the airship rolling unpredictably. While R100 was quite stable in bad weather, R101 was not; rolling and bucking motions were becoming so great the Captain 'Birdy' Irwin took on additional ballast to distribute. (R101 like R100, had rain collectors that would drain rainwater into its ballast tanks.)

South of London, observers braved the storm to see R101 fly by, and even these ground observers were surprised at how low and slow she was flying, to the point that they assumed (correctly) that she had engine trouble. Her wireless reported that R101 was gaining altitude for the cross-channel portion, but one observer estimated her height as 500 ft - less than one R101 length from the ground. It seems that R101's staggers had returned: she wanted to fly at 1000 ft, but was having trouble maintaining that altitude. As R101 flew over the channel, Leech and Gent, working on the malfunctioning engine, also thought R101 was alarmingly low, as the individual waves in the channel could be clearly made out. (The engine malfunction turned out to be a broken oil pressure gauge.) The airship was still lurching, as well, with enough force to occasionally throw Leech and Gent into each other. Later reports have the XO taking the wheel from the Coxwain about this time and taking R101 up to 1000 ft - with the instructions "don't let it go below 1000" but that's still really low when your aircraft is 777 ft. long. The strain on the airship was showing in other ways, too. The crew before turning in climbed to the 'gas level' to inspect the works. To quote 'But for the Millionth Chance' again:

On every side the wires and chains that were slung round the gasbags and their pulleys creaked and then sprang tight with a great clanking of links as the airship rolled; the hiss and rumble of escaping gas through the throats of the valves sounded like elephants breathing in the darkness above them. The gigantic gasbags move continually like living things as the air pressure changed. Now they would be huge balloons, glowing with a faint eerie luminosity in the dim height of the arched roof, so that a man could walk beneath them and see them suspended above like enormous pears. Then, a change in pressure would bring them down, flabby and bloated, so that he had to thrust his way past them,while the damp, stinking covers laced with the guts of bullocks, clung about his face like a fog. The inside of an airship was no place for a claustrophobe - or even for a man with imagination.

Crossing over into France, the wind increased, though the dicky engine was now running again. It was now past midnight, R101 having made an average speed of 33 knots. The passengers and most of the RAW heads turned in, save for RAW Engineer Michael Rope, who was still up at 2 AM, keeping an eye on the lifting cells. Leech and Gent have fixed the engine, and had a quick supper, before nipping into the smoking lounge. Leech and Gent were old friends, and Leech suggested Gent gets some sleep; he'd take the night watch. Gent, having been up since early this morning, is grateful and shuffles off. Leech then begins a tour of the engine cars. After that, past 2 am, Leech wanted a quiet smoke out of the rain, and somewhat wearily went back to the smoking room, as that's where the lighter was.

Meanwhile, engineer Joe Binks had just woken up for his watch. Slipping out of his fur-lined sleeping bag, he caught a quick cup of coca, then prepared himself for the ladder. Going down the engine access ladder the wind and rain were so fierce that he couldn't breathe, or see. Still, he got to the warm, but incredibly noisy engine pod. Careful not to touch anything exhaust-pipey as R101 rocked and rolled, Binks regained his bearings. Hearing protection was supposed to be worn, but engineers in the engine pods found such measures useless - the only thing they seemed to block was the sound of the human voice. Binks then has a shouted but cheerful conversation with Arthur Bell, the engineer he was releaving, who pointing out Binks is late (it was four minutes past 2), and  gives Binks a quick report on the engine. Bell then turns to ascend the ladder - and Binks then gave a shout of alarm. He had been looking out the engine car window, and not much can be seen. It's dark, it's raining, and the ground is covered in mist. What Binks does see is a cathedral looming out of the gloom like an especially pointy, gothic reef;  it's dangerously close, and the roof of which is almost on a level with the engine car.

"We're nearly at roof level!" Binks shouted.

"What?" said Bell, understandably.

"I said we're nearly at roof level! I just saw a church or something!"

Bell heard time, and looked out the top hatch, through the whirling propeller and into the murk beyond. "What do you mean? I can't see a thing. Are you alright?" Bell is now alarmed, too. Then, R101's nose drops dramatically, and both engineers feel the ship make a sudden decent, suddenly halted. While they struggle to regain their footing and not touch anything exhaust-pipey, R101's nose lifts to level.

"What's wrong?" Binks shouted.

"It's just the storm, it's nothing" Bell shouted back, none too convinced. Then R101 did it again, a short, sharp fall, with this time R101 much more slowly regaining equilibrium.

"She's heavier" shouted Binks. "What's happening?" R101 began a new fall.

Before Bell could reply, the telegraph rang all ahead slow. The engine was set to slow, and while they peered through the windows, seeing only the spinning props of their engine and the great silver curve of R101 vanishing into wet darkness, they could feel the tramp of men running on the rope walk above. As they looked up to the gangway, 'Sky' Hunt appeared and shouted "We're down, lads!"

----

Leech, meanwhile, has found the cozy smoking lounge, sat down, put up his feet, and after a smoke, has dozed off. He awakes suddenly, as R101's nose sharply fell. All the furniture began to slide toward the nose, and then the nose just as suddenly regained its level. Leech put his feet down, but was still thrown by another sudden decent. He had no idea what was going on, but he knew how low R101 had been flying - even a loss of a hundred feet each time put R101 at a serious danger of hitting something. The airship dropped again, and this time all forward movement stopped so suddenly that Leech is finally thrown out of his wicker chair. The lights went out, and Leech was in a dark room tangled in lightweight furniture.

Leech felt his way to the door, only to find it jammed - the impact of what had clearly been a crash must have twisted the frame. Leech began kicking the door, and then heard a sound like the roar of a vast waterfall - five and a half million cubic feet of hydrogen igniting.

----

Bell and Binks were scarcely better off.

At the fatal spark of the hydrogen, both men figure themselves dead. Their after engine car is still high in the air, and worse, the wind is blowing the flames onto their side of the airship. Fortune saves them - water ballast from a broken bag floods the car, protecting both men. The respite was momentary. Staying in the car was certain death - the engine car contained the Tornado's starter motor, and its 30 gallon gasoline fuel tank. Choosing their moment, keeping their back to the wind, they climbed out of their pod and jumped away from the airship wreck. Both men landed on soft, wet turf. Both men then couldn't breathe, and had to half walk, half crawl, away from R101. (Some books say this is because R101's immolation consumed all the local oxygen, but after asking around I think this was just the effects of adrenaline. Both Bell and Binks had burned themselves badly on their hands and feet, but didn't even realize it until later.)  Once they got their breath back, they began to call the names of their shipmates.

Leech, meanwhile was feeling the adrenaline as well. He picked up a table to bash his way through the door, only to have it break with the first strike - it was of course balsa wood covered in laminate oak. He then repeated this with every bit of furniture he could lay hands on in the dark, with the same result. Standing in a small pile of balsa wood kindling, he felt that he had to get out, or die. He tried to listen for the sound of creaking structural collapse, but all he could hear was the sound of blood pounding in his ears. He began kicking the metal bulkhead, but he too was wearing the canvas shoes, and even a man in full fight or flight mode can't break a bulkhead with his bare feet. Switching tactics, he felt along the wall till it turned from smooth steel to rough asbestos, and began beating on that. Bashing a modest hole, grabbed once edge and pulled with all his strength, ignoring the smell of burning diesel. Leech then stepped out onto the companionway - everywhere was fire and red glowing metal. Seeing a clear patch of sky in the midst of the burning, he jumped for it.

Luckily, a tree directly below broke his fall, and cooled him with a shower of rainwater. Stepping down onto the wet grass, he realized he was burned in several places. He also heard voices, and started toward them.

These were the voices of Bell and Binks. The French were not slow to respond - already the trio could see lights moving through the nearby town of Beauvais. While they didn't know it, Gendarmes on horseback were already riding to the wreck, commandeering bed sheets from locals for bandages. Despite all three men having serious burns (Bell and Binks were shocked when Leech came out of the mist, as he has taken a nasty burn on his forehead) they decided to return to the wreck to look for survivors.

The wind was still against them, driving smoke into their faces. The stainless steel girders glowed, hissing as the rain fell on them. At least light was not a problem; the wreck burned so brightly they were blind to anything else. They found one survivor - a man mortally burned but away from the wreck - perhaps he had jumped as well. He begged them to bring his half-soaked, half scorched jacket back home, and brightening a bit, invited his rescuers to a tin of cigarettes he had in his pockets.

Bell, Leech, and Binks gratefully took one. Then, of course, they had no lighter. After a few seconds, the solution hit them all at once. Binks took his unlit cigarette, and went over to the nearest piece of structural girder, and lit it on the stainless steel. R101 had turned out to be a really poor flying machine, but in that field in France, it made a hell of a cigarette lighter.

------

Despite the fearless efforts of the locals, who faced the red-hot wreck to look for survivors, only 6 of the 54 crew and passengers of R101 survived. AJ Cook was one, a engineer in the port engine car, who had to push a red-hot girder aside with his hand before leaping to safety. As he wandered away from the wreck, he found his overalls were still smouldering. Arthur Disley was chief electrician and wireless operator on R101, and had been dozing in the electrical room when the sudden nose-down bob jolted him awake. He had the presence of mind immediately after the crash to try and cut electrical power to the airship. Unfortunately, R101 had two breakers, and Disley cut the power to the rear of the airship, leaving the part suffering trauma still electrified. I can't find any mention on how he escaped - only Disley and Leech managed to get out of the hull alive - so I'm going to assume he went to the control car and kicked out a window. At any rate, he was found by some Frenchmen, taken to a nearby telephone and called the Air Ministry in Britain, breaking news of the crash. Victor Savoy, the only other survivor, was also a engineer in a engine car who presumably jumped once the airship had crashed. Two more men, riggers Samuel Church and W. G. Radcliffe, were pulled horribly burned from the wreckage, only to die in hospital. George "Sky" Hunt is believed, tragically, to have escaped alive from the wreck as well, only to die when he went back into the inferno to look for a life-long friend.

You may notice that the British ensign on the tail is eerily the only bit of fabric to survive the fire.

 The R101 disaster struck the UK hard - the last time a national disaster had hit like this, it was the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. France declared a national day of mourning, and the memorial service in London was a state affair held at St. Paul's Cathedral. Nearly half a million people came to see the somber procession of coffins proceeding from St. Paul's to the railway station for a last ride to Cardington.

When you need this many horse-drawn coffins, it's not a successful government program.

 An inquiry into the crash started almost immediately after the disaster. As it turns out, the late Major Bishop was the head of the UK's air crash investigation services, so the first investigator on the scene was Mr. McWade, the inspector at Cardington who tried in vain to sound the alarm. (In fact it was Major Bishop who wrote the letter back to McWade, telling him that his job was to see that the padding was done properly, not to question if this was a slapdash solution or  not.)  What he found was a fire-blackened skeleton with pools of diesel fuel still burning. The inquiry took testimony from the survivors and expert witnesses, including Capt. George Meager and Dr. Hugo Eckner, head of the Zeppelin Company. I'm not sure if this is a first, but the inquiry also did a series of wind-tunnel tests to model various possibilities in R101's crash.

The results were illuminating. Prof Bairstow, the same professor previously involved in R101's certification, found that leaks in an airship are dangerous (aside from the obvious burn-y reasons) because you can actually ignore them for awhile, until some small change in flying conditions causes the effects to assert themselves all at once. R101 was reckoned to have been 'flying heavy' over France (IE heavier than buoyant.) She was staying airborne thanks to dynamic lift, the same sort of lift an airplane generates. While LTA craft often make a practice of flying slightly heavy, especially when landing, R101 was reckoned to be badly on the heavy side, thanks to the leaking of gas, damage to her forward lifting cells, and her heavy load of fuel. The witnesses put this heaviness from anywhere from 4 to 13 (!) tons. As nobody can say with certainty how much lifting gas remained over Beauvais, nobody knows for sure. At any rate, at Beauvais R101 suffered a rupture of 1 or more of her forward lifting cells. This could have had several causes. The section where the rupture happened is the section where the 'glued' section of the outer cover was; it's possible that a compromised bit of the outer cover failed, a failure that widened thanks to the wind and rain. The lifting cells are really not made to be exposed to gale force winds and driving rain, and it would not take long for them to become damaged, even if they were in perfect condition, and we know that those lifting cells were already leaking badly. Whatever the cause, they ruptured along their tops, emptying them almost immediately.

Joe Binks (left) walks with Harry Leech (center) and Arthur Bell (right) in the funeral procession.

When this happened, R101 went into a dive. The coxswain would have tried to correct, eventually pulling the tail 'hard up'. (Postmortem analysis in fact revealed the rudder in that position.) When the ship only came about level with that sort of input, the crew knew they had a crisis on their hands - they had major lift loss in the forward part of the ship. What they might not have known is that they were already flying heavy, either because they had lost too much gas or needed very badly to vent ballast. At this point these trends asserted themselves with a vengeance. Captain Irwin seems to have realized (if you pardon the pun) the gravity of the situation, as he set the engines to slow. It appears "Sky" Hunt was on the bridge with the Captain, and went to rouse the crew because both he and the Captain knew the R101 could no longer fly. Unfortunately, the nose would not come up; Church, one of the riggers to briefly survive the R101, managed to report he was on his way to release the emergency ballast bag when the airship hit the ground.

The fire might have been started by any number of causes, but the inquiry believed that one of the engine cars was bent in the crash into the hull, where the still-running engine, its exhaust, or its exhaust pipes were hot enough to start the fire.  Hydrogen mixed with air was, as ever, treacherous stuff.

One more thing: nobody seems sure to what extent R101 had leaked away her lifting gas when she crashed, and various sources give estimates. Nobody knows the true extent of the leaking, because 1) R101 had never been flown in bad weather before, and 2) nobody knows what effect this would have on R101's leakage rate. With these variables in play, the only definite thing you could say is that the effect would "not be good." Frankly, looking back on all the scary unknown varibles the final flight of the R101 took with her, it's much harder to settle on a single cause for disaster rather than form a cogent theory of what went wrong.

And this, my friends, is why you don't attempt long flights without flight testing.

HEADLINE: British Public Experiences Decline in Interest with Hydrogen Airships

So a national tragedy the likes of which had not been seen in the UK since the First World War took the shine off of the public's enthusiasm for rigid airship travel - which is hardly surprising. After all, the British public had been told for several years that R101 was a marvel of technology and as safe as white bread, only to have it explode and kill a lot of people. Politically, the program was now toxic, and the question arose what to do next. This question was asked at the start of 1931 - the height of the great depression. The politics of the time was chaotic - on the one hand, there was the rich people who wanted to keep the pound on the gold standard (a measure in itself of austerity adopted after the First World War) and to spend less, while the others quite rightly pointed out this would 1) make the depression worse, and 2) would be very cruel to the millions who relied on government aid to feed themselves. Ramsay MacDonald, well known socialist, would eventually side with the orthodox richers and implement crushing austerity. How crushing? The Royal Navy experienced a brief mutiny when enlisted sailors wages were cut. While MacDonand briefly threw his support behind keeping the program going, in these times it was more or less inevitable that the program would be ended. The Royal Airship Works had "many redundancies", as the British say. All this was lost in the larger tale of the time, including MacDonald being kicked out of the Labor Party, only to form a coalition government with the other parties with himself as Prime Minister. 

There was also the question of what to do with R100, which was hung up in a hanger in Cardington. Both Canada and the United States attempted to buy R100, but this raised an awful specter in the minds of the politicians: that somebody else would succeed where they had failed, and thus demonstrate the politicians themselves incompetent. (Canada especially would go on to kill quite a few aerospace projects, and then cosigning everything to the flames, like the CF-105 Arrow, for exactly this reason.) So, the decision was made to scrap R100. Torn apart, her structure was flattened by bulldozers and sold. All of the archive material was also going to be burned - it's very difficult not to get the impression the politicians wanted the whole project buried and forgotten - but most of it was saved from the flames, to form the basis of the National Airship Trust today.

The people who build R100 were saddened, but moved on. Sir Dennistoun Burney had already founded a new firm, manufacturing innovative aerodynamic cars. His ingenious mind found many things to work on during World War 2 - he worked with Nevil Shute on an aerial torpedo during the early part of the war. Barnes Wallace would use geodesic structures in a whole series of airplanes. The most successful of these was the Vickers Wellington, which was famous for its ability to absorb tremendous damage without any effect on its ability to fly.  The last airplane to use this construction style was the Vickers Windsor, which I encourage you to read about if you crave true aeronautical insanity. Wallace also contributed to any number of Second World War projects, including designing the depth charge used in the famous "Dambuster" raids. Nevil Shute Norway started his own aircraft firm, Airspeed Ltd. The firm had good success during the 1930s, and was bought out by De Havilland in 1940. The most famous aircraft Airspeed built was the Horsa tow glider - a disposable glider for supporting paratroopers during World War 2. They also made the Airspeed Ambassador, an airliner that looks to be a cross between a Lockheed Constellation and a Dash-8. Shute went to Australia in 1950 in protest to changes in inheritance taxes, and by that time was a recognized novelist. He wrote the eerily prescient "The Sky is No Highway" about the development of a advanced new British airliner with a hidden flaw - it was later made into a movie with Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. Another famous book-work of his is "On the Beach", a post-apocalyptic novel about nuclear war. He died in 1960.

Airship Schemes and where they got us

Looking back on the whole scheme, I'd have to say that it was a very good idea that none the less didn't work. How the R100 and R101 team handled risk was an important part of it; the R100 team kept itself focused on the goal of creating a usable and economical airship, trying to hedge or avoid risk whenever possible, while the R101 took on additional risk without any thought of the impacts that such risks could have further down the line. It really was arrogance on the part of R101's builders, who assumed that they could not only build a better airship than their rivals, but do it with new, untested, technology in most of their major sub-assemblies. Then you have the idea of competitive airship building - which was good PR, but that was about it. If you've read all of these posts, you know my opinion of the objectivity of this contest is very low: the Labor Government was determined to prove the validity of government backed industry, and that meant R101 had to win, regardless of costs, or risks. This political goal completely obfuscated the larger one of improving communications within the empire.

Even if you don't care much for airships, the end of the Imperial Airship scheme is pretty sad. A nation had started a really big and ambitious aerospace project, and despite the good intentions and hard work, the project had ended in disaster. The only crumb of comfort here is that airships, of course, were not the future of long distance air travel. This isn't like the time the UK gave up on digital computing at the end of the Second World War for atavistic security reasons. As you may know, aircraft would continue to evolve and soon have the range to fly long distances on a commercial basis. As one person I found in my readings put it, in light of later aeronautical developments airships became "great grey ghosts"; pale shadows of history.

It's also true that even if the Hindenburg disaster of a few years later didn't end the era of passenger airships, World War 2 surely would have - the advances in aviation would have rendered the airship extinct. Still, in North Atlantic aviation in particular, you can see that Airships were about a decade ahead in long-distance passenger flying. In a world where the Imperial Airship fleet had been built, Britain would have had the world's only long range airliner network.

This is the Handley Page 42, how people were flying to India in 1930.

 Earlier in 1930, the first commercial airplane flight was attempted across the Atlantic in the massive Dornier X flying boat. This went better compared to say, the last flight of the R101 as there were no crashes or deaths, but, well, it took a whole year for the X to cross the Atlantic and then return. While the connection of the British Empire by air was already happening, the Atlantic remained a tough nut to crack for commercial flying.

It was only in the later 1930s that trans-Atlantic aviation began to seem feasible to established airlines, using flying boats. The first air-mail service across the North Atlantic was via the "Short-Mayo Composite" a terrible sandwich if ever there was one. Two aircraft strapped together on takeoff, the larger (the Short Mayo flying boat) would carry the smaller (the Short Mercury floatplane) far west of Ireland, where the Mercury would detach and fly onward, hopefully to Montreal. Not long after, De Havilland unveiled the DH Albatross, a gorgeous lightweight aircraft constructed mainly from wood. This plane could fly the Atlantic with a load of mail. It was only in 1939 that a regular passenger service was established, and it was done by an American firm. Pan Am used large Boeing 314 flying boats, hopping from America to Botwood, NL, across the Atlantic to Foynes, Ireland, and finally to Southampton. The tickets, like the tickets on airships, were for rich people only; it was only a little faster than R100, and the comfort was not much improved over R100, though I suppose at least the cabins were properly heated. Looking back on that, and thinking "we could have had this ten years before" gives you an idea of the lost opportunity.

The Short-Mayo composite. Hey, it worked.

Still, even if rigid airships proved a dead end, the program itself was not a dead loss. R101, despite her flaws, pioneered subcontracting out most of the major parts in aerospace projects. She also used high tensile steel, a first for aircraft. Supposedly, R100 was the first project of any type that used color-coded wired for ease of assembly and maintenance. Truth be told, though, the lasting innovations for aviation were the peripheral ones: international weather forecasting, electronics for conveying weather information, and, rather harshly underlined, the need for objective and independent safety assessment in aircraft. All of these things are still with us today. Most of the infrastructure from the Imperial Airship scheme ended up being recycled during World War 2 (the hanger in Karachi remained a surprisingly long time simply because of the difficulty of demolishing it) and it ended up quite useful to the US Air Force, which operated there during the Second World War. The hangers at Cardington remained, and are still there today. For many decades they often were used as interior sets in TV and movies.

Nowadays the Cardingtion sheds have, astoundingly, returned to airship construction. Hybrid Air Vehicles has just finished construction on a new model airship called the Airlander. A helium airship built with modern technology, the company hopes that it will be the first in a fleet, showing the world the usefulness of LTA craft. I hope they succeed; maybe this time around the breed will be successful enough to multiply.

The End

Images:

The Dornier X flying boat over New York City.

The Dornier X's flight engineer; his control panel was only a little more modern than the R101's.

The DH Albatross.

The Boeing 314 - the first proper transatlantic airliner, it would have a short career thanks to the Second World War.


Part of the a series of posts on the Imperial Airships.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4