A little slow, because life happens and I am garbage

A kind reader tipped me off that there was something screwed up with link navigation in the R100/R101 posts. I'm not sure what exactly the problem was (blogspot upgraded to https while I writing the series, and the resulting technical twitches might've borked the links) but something was up. One of the chapters vanished from the sidebar as well. Anyway, I've gone through and fixed the links at the bottom of the page, and you can now find everything on the sidebar again. The metatags work as well if you are looking for different chapters. If you spot anything else wrong, please don't hesitate to comment/drop me a note.

Oh, and I'm nearly done not one, but two new aeronautical nerd-posts on two different subjects. If you read that and ask "why didn't you finish one so we could read that while you did another", well, see above.

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

The Story of the R100 and R101 IV: A Big Day Out

R100 at Cardington.

 When we last saw R100, she was at the docking mast at Cardington, getting ready for her flight to Canada. This post is all about that trip - though it also is about what the Imperial Airship service might have been like, had it been established.

R100 was supposed to have taken the trip to the Dominion of Canada as early as May, but minor problems managed to delay the flight to the end of July 1930. So when the chance actually came, the men of the R100 program were chomping at the bit to get going. Having flown an extensive series of flight tests (at least compared to R101), and with all systems working in harmony, departing to Canada was simply a matter of loading enough fuel, in this case, 34.5 tons of gasoline.The Captain for the flight was to be Squadron Commander Booth, and Caption George Meager, one of our narrators, to be first mate. The flight crew for R100's trans-Atlantic trip was its usual crew: a roughly proportional  mixture of Navy LTA flyers (like Capt.Meager), British Private School lads (who'd used their connections to get a job on what all the newspapers were talking about) and working-class riggers and other men recruited during construction. Despite the odd mix, this crew by all accounts worked brilliantly together, complementing each other's strengths, and having the operational, theoretical, and practical knowledge needed to run a rigid airship. Despite Booth being the captain, Major Scott was actually making lots of flying decisions and could be considered R100's commander. (Major Scott, let's not forget, was the captain of the R38's trans-Atlantic flight, so there was some justification for this slightly awkward command arrangement.)

Nevielle Shute was coming along, as was his boss, Sir Denison Burney. The other passengers were representatives of the RAF (Sq. Leader Wann) the Royal Navy (Lt. Cmdr. Prentice) and people from RAW: Wing Commander Colmore and two assistants of his, one of these being the Mr. McWade that tried his best to sound the alarm on the R101's flaws.

While R100 is being loaded, it's worthwhile to stop a moment and talk about the state of trans-Atlantic air travel. Charles Lindbergh's historic solo flight to Paris happened only three years previous, and Amelia Earhart became a celebrity like Lindbergh in 1928 by being the first woman on a trans-Atlantic flight, and she was a passenger. (Earhart felt her fame undeserved for this, and would go on to perform many aviation exploits of her own.) 1929 saw 13 attempts to cross the Atlantic by flying, and eight of those failed, with two more attempts just vanishing over the ocean. In contrast, rigid airships had a 100% success rate on trans-Atlantic flights, with the first commercial trans-Atlantic flight happening in 1928 by Graf Zeppelin. The 1930 trans-Atlantic season had gotten off to a promising start in May: taking the shorter south Atlantic route, Jean Mermoz for Aéropostale flew a Latecoere 28 floatplane from Dakar to Natal, the first airplane trans-Atlantic mail service. That May also saw another successful crossing by Graf Zeppelin. The Southern Cross, a Fokker F.VII that was the first aircraft to fly the Pacific, flew from Dublin to Harbor Grace, Newfoundland. And two British flyers in a De Haviland Puss Moth crashed on takeoff in Harbor Grace, trying to fly to Britain.

All this is me repeating myself, I know, but it is worth emphasizing that despite typical British understatement, the flight of the R100 was in fact a pretty big deal in 1930. Especially as this flight was bringing along cooks, stewards, and hot breakfasts every morning.

R100's salon, with Neville Norway (Shute) on the stairway.

The upstairs, where additional passenger cabins were.

The cabins themselves were spartan - the window looks out onto the promenade, not outside.

Cardington, UK to St. Hubert, DoC; Direct; Cabin & Meals INCLUDED

Cast off for the R100 was the 29th of July 1930, at three am. Despite the dead of night departure time, hundreds of people stayed up to see R100 depart, and honked the horns of their cars when R100 fired up her engines and departed the mast. Flying between 1000 and 1500 ft, R100 first flew north-west, to get around a depression near Ireland. This route took R100 directly over Liverpool, where every ship in the harbor blew their horn as she passed overhead in the dawn sky.  R100 actually had her own meteorologist on board to interpret data being sent by the Air Ministry; by noon R100 was north of the depression and had a tail wind to take her across the ocean.

Shute went to bed after takeoff and got up around 8 am. He might have breakfasted with Meager, who was coming off watch. Meager tells us that breakfast was "Fried eggs and bacon with hot buttered toast, marmalade and fresh coffee."  Meager then does his inspection, including a long, long walk out on deck to inspect the 'tops', as it were. While making an inspection of the tail, Meager got caught in a sudden downpour that turned to hail. When Meager made it back to the control gondola to report, everyone is surprised by his wetness, as they were barely aware it was raining. R100 skims the coast of Ireland until her turn west, and then goes on three engines. With the tailwind, her speed is 60 knots, or nearly 70 mph. Lunch was served at 1:30, which was soup, stewed beef, peas and potatoes, with greengages and custard for dessert. Beer, tea and coffee to drink. As this was settling, Shute observed the unsettled, choppy Atlantic from the Promenade, and thought it looked very desolate. "It beats us all how anyone should have the courage to attempt the Atlantic in an aeroplane" he tells his diary.

The gramophone plays in the afternoon; because the engines are physically so far away from the passenger area, its music is easy to hear everywhere.  The walls of the cabins were also fabric, so hopefully the person in the next room doesn't snore. Cards are a popular activity among the passengers, as is pumping gasoline. To get petrol from the main tanks to the tanks the engines used, it had to be manually pumped there, and there was no shortage of volunteers among the passengers. (I think this speaks to time passing a mite slowly.)  Drift over the ocean is measured by dust-bomb by day, and calcium flare at night. The dust-bomb (a small box filled with aluminum power) is dropped, and the cloud of dust that results is a good mark for R100 to check her drift and the wind speed. Four PM, the all important tea time, and you can have your tea while taking in the rain, mist, icebergs, and general desolate emptiness of the North Atlantic.  Additional navigation fixes are provided by wireless contact with passing ships. If two fixes can be done in a short time, it provides a way to triangulate R100's position. A game is invented that will last the rest of R100's journey, where passengers and crew take bets on the exact distance traveled from noon observation to noon observation.

The control car was directly below the Promenade windows. A man is climbing out of the engine car on the left.

The next day, the 30th of July, is more of the same, though Shute give a quote in his diary that frequently appears in the story of the R100. "The comfort of this flight is almost staggering. Sleep all night in bed, get up, shave in hot water, dress and eat a normal breakfast served in a Christian way. If this water collector can be developed, as I think it can, we may be able to have baths in future ships." From the point of view of comfort, at least, the R100 is a success - though in a slight negative mark, the flight has already ran out of beer.  A low pressure area around Hudson's Bay is creating a headwind, and now all six engines are being used. Belle Isle is seen through the mist (an island just north of Newfoundland's most northerly point) at nightfall. The R100 takes the straight of Belle Isle (the channel between Newfoundland and Quebec) into the gulf of St. Lawrence, hugging Quebec's north shore. Once the St. Lawrence is found, the river can can be followed right to Montreal. Meager is not much impressed with the north shore of Quebec, as it "seems to consist almost entirely of forest, inter-spaced with numerous lakes."

Lifting cells 7 and 8, giving about 15 tons of lift, seem to be leaking, and now an attempt is made to mend any holes. Cox'n Hobbs leads a party of men along the radial wires in between the lifting cells, and several 8 cm holes are mended along a radial wire chafing the lifting cell. These sorts of repairs pose a tricky problem to the men of the gas bags: how to know when lifting gas is about? This is important, not only as a sign of a gas bag leaking, but also to know when you might be in danger of passing out and falling. (A match is obviously out.) The answer is singing, talking, or whistling while on "the gas level." The lifting gas will change your pitch if you encounter a cloud. (Meager says hydrogen gas does have a sort-of odor, giving the air a particular metallic tang to it, and well, he would know.)

At three PM on August 1st, approximately 80 km (50 miles) from Quebec City, the Montreal RCMP radio the R100 and ask their ETA to Montreal. In an attempt to make it to Montreal by nightfall, Major Scott directs Captain Booth to step on it, and speed increases to 70 knots. Shortly after, mountains on Quebec's north shore add some excitement: cold air rolling off the mountains into the gulf creates quite a lot of turbulence. The formerly serene R100 gets all sorts of pitching, yawing, and rolling motions, and R100 steers south away from shore. Once the turbulence stopped, men in the port and starboard engine cars ring the bridge: they can see rips in the rear fins.

R100 over the Gulf of St.Lawrence.

Meager, Shute, and a team of riggers are dispatched to the stern, and speed is reduced to about 30 km/h. Some tape has come away, making twin 3 ft slits on the leading edge of the lower fin. This was mild enough, though unless mended, the rips would spread. While Meager went to get more riggers, Shute examined a large hole in the cover made in under the keel, and pulled the loose cover inboard, to stop it from flapping until riggers came along to start mending. Meager and Shute then split up, with Shute next examining the port fin while Meager went to the starboard and top fins. (One advantage of fin's hollow structure is that in daylight, tears could be see very easily from inside.) Shute found a hole in the lower port fin "large enough to drive a bus through" about 15 ft long. The holding tapes were, ah, holding, but the fabric itself was in tatters and beating quite badly. The starboard and top fins had minor damage like the bottom one, so after the riggers had used needle, thread, and regulation dope to mend the small holes, all effort was concentrated on the port-side fin. Fortunately, a Cox'n had stashed a roll of cotton fabric instead of ditching it for the Canada flight, and this was taken up to the hole. By Shute's account, up to 15 men were out on the portside fin, 1500 ft above the St. Lawrence. The dicey job was inside the fin; unless they were within reach of the leading fin edge or main structural spar, riggers had walk tightrope style on the lower structural wires, while bracing themselves via the upper structural wires. Meager says the men simply hitched a rope to themselves and to the nearest structural bit, while Shute said the men had safety belts for this sort of nearly-aerobatic work, which they "sometimes" attached to nearby spars and wires.  In fact, at one point Meager had to tell Cox'n Hobbs to put a rope on, and received of a covert look of disgust from the Cox'n. Clearly for the riggers, this was all in a day's work. Later SC Booth came up to observe the repairs, and found another rigger taking a short rest: he'd made a hammock out of a square of upper canvas still properly lashed - with nothing but wire and air below. 

It was a rough and ready repair - the big roll of cotton fabric lashed to the lower fin via rope - but these were (mostly) Navy men, with a good understanding on how to lash things.The total repair time was two hours.

At 6 PM, R100 flew past Quebec City, with the bridge that spans the St. Lawrence crowded with people. The delay while R100 fixed her fins now set her ETA for Montreal to midnight. As it happens, another event was to delay R100.

R100 over Quebec City.

7:30 was supper time, and at 7:20 Burney, Shute, Major Scott, and Captian Booth were having a aperitief in the form of sherry. Captain Meager was on watch in the control car, looking forward to dinner. R100 was passing Trois Rivieres when R100 flew into the squall line of an approaching thunderstorm. (Major Scott had told Capt. Booth to fly on through it, despite the just repaired damage. Evidently, he was the sort of man who would press on when more cautious men might have went around.) R100 plows into the storm's updraft, going from 1200 to 3000 ft in about a minute. The crew angles the nose down as far as possible, but this just means the airship is now climbing while at a nose down angle of 35 degrees. Dinner, set up on a table in the salon, was flung forward, with toast being observed as far as the second structural ring. Similarly, in the kitchen, all crockery, silverware, and the big tureen of soup the chef had just finished making went on the floor. The climb ends at 5000 ft, where R100 meets torrential rain. All this action is made somewhat more complected by a barrel in the radio room tipping over, and a great deal of red aircraft dope leaking out. Meager, directly below in the midst of everything else found a red substance dripping into the control car. Major Scott cut the power to the airship's lights (the dope was flammable) and it was ten minutes before the dope had been sufficiently cleaned up for them to go back on.

Meager then checked the tail for damage. The afternoon's fix was just fine, but now the starboard lower fin had torn itself, with two 20 foot rents running along two structural wires. Speed was reduced (and further thunderstorms were gone around instead of through) as Meager, without dinner, lead a gang of riggers in the fixing of these latest tears before they could develop into another hole. This repair session required much less high-wire work from the riggers, but by now, the sun had gone down, so everything had to be illuminated by flashlight. By midnight, the repairs are done, and the giant illuminated cross at the top of Mt. Royal in Montreal can be seen. The illuminated cross was the rather surreal end to the most eventful day of the Big Trip Out. R100 spends the rest of the night meandering about, staying out of the way of small thunderstorms passing by. As dawn breaks, R100 steers for St. Hubert, and her docking tower.

 By 5:37 AM Montreal time the call "ship secure" means that R100 has docked. The total flight time was 78 hours 49 minutes, and the distance covered was 3,364 nautical miles - (6,230 km, 3871 statue miles.) By train and ship, this trip would have taken twice the amount of time.

Sunny Days in Canada

For the full effect, here's a newsreel of R100 docking.

St. Hubert was Canada's first international airport, and Canada had actually studied the problems (IE staggeringly vast crowds) that an airship arrival can bring, having examined at some length the previous visits of Graf Zeppelin to the United States. They've made provisions for toilets, concessions, RCMP to control crowds, and even ran a branch railway line from the station in Montreal to St. Hubert. All these things are well considered, as even as R100 is docking, her crew observes the nearby roads jammed with people and vehicles. Some 10,000 people were there to greet R100's crew when they disembarked, and over a million people would make the trip to see R100 at her tower. The RCMP (dressed naturally in their dress reds and broad-brimmed hats) managed the people going into and out of the mooring mast itself, while the Royal Canadian Dragoons of the Canadian Army managed what would now be called site security. Tours of the R100 were obviously a hot ticket.

It goes without saying the crew and especially the heads of the R100 enterprise gave lots of interviews, and were given all sorts of Dinners (note the capital letter) by which various groups of Canadians basically said "We're glad you are here." About the only interesting thing to come out of the media press (har har) was that in the Imperial airship scheme saw the future of the program as flying very long distances, almost always over water. This may seem like a weird limit to put on a machine that flies, but it made sense. Difficult flying conditions for rigid airships are not in the cold, or over the water, but hot areas over land. As the pioneering long distance flight of L 59 demonstrated, such areas pose challenges to your average Zeppelin flight. First, hot air is less dense than cold air, so it lifts less. Second, the greater extremes of temperature makes keeping the ballast in trim much more difficult. Mountains especially are tricky: as sometimes the temperature of air varies greatly from one side to the other. A perfectly trimmed and balanced airship can fly over mountains and go instantly out of balance, being either much too heavy or much too light. Oceans, in contrast, have a moderated temperature and (note to self: check this later) not much in the way of elevation. So if you had an airship that, say, was very heavy and had trouble flying anyway, restricting her to mostly ocean flights was probably for the best.

Of course it makes the remarks of a certain Sterling Archer sting all the more.

Obviously a lot of talk during R100's Montreal stay and after involved the future of airships. While the Air Ministry and RAW were very focused on communication lines and especially flights to India, Sir Burney had a different view. He saw British airships competing with German airships for the prize of trans-Atlantic air traffic, especially with America. He had also, despite his status as instigator of the whole program, some doubts about the ability of airships to be commercially viable - by his reckoning only the very longest trans-Pacific routes would be able to be profitable, where the time-saving advantage was at its greatest. He also explictly ruled out North American transcontinental flights: while American airships could fly over the Rockies, apparently the British designs couldn't handle the altitude.

Our correspondents spent some time mending small things that went wrong, including another rip in the hydrogen cells. Shute visited the Vickers works in Montreal, and got several rolls of airship grade material for the flight back. Capt. Meager had a rougher time of it: Major Scott asked him to examine the areas around the upper ventilators (vents to allow the escape of gas at the top of the airship) for rot, and he found quite a bit of it in the cords that held the lifting cells to the frame. (Water was getting in via the vents.)  He and Cox'in Hobbs had to climb up into the gridwork to the top of the airship and made repairs, all while it was fine summer weather. The ambient air was 30 degrees C, so god only know how hot it was up in the frame. Meager reports getting back to the inhabited parts of the airship with his overalls literally soaked with sweat. At least there was a steward on hand with cool lemonade.

R100 also did a "local flight": both to give the press and VIPs an actual airship ride, and to show off the R100 via an overflight of Ontario down to Niagara falls. This happened near the end of R100's Canadian vacation, as it allowed to test that the cover fixes had stuck.

Visitors during the Ontario flight getting their look on.

Despite the name, the local flight took 26 hours and covered 1600 km (1000 miles.) It's also the only time R100 flew with a full load of passengers. Neville Shute gave the flight a pass to let other people ride. R100 got underway on the tenth of August, at six in the evening. By ten PM R100 was circling a moonlit Ottawa. At around midnight, R100 set course for Lake Ontario, passing over Peterborough and Kingston. They reached Toronto at the ungodly hour of 4:45 AM, and thus set course for Niagara falls instead. This was achieved by sunrise, and in fine clear weather, so all could make out the waterfall waterfallin'. R100 then turned back to Toronto and gave it a proper overflight, with the entire city stopping to see the passing airship. R100 then set course along Lake Ontario and down the St. Lawrence to Montreal, arriving about noon, but then had to cruise around St. Hubert as another heard of thunderstorms were grazing in the Montreal area. Somewhere around here two engines had mechanical trouble. One ate its reduction gear, and another had magneto trouble, which threw off the engine timing.

Toronto from the air, 1930.

R100 over the new Toronto-Dominion bank, under construction.

Once docked, R100's technical staff got on the problems. The magneto was easily fixed, but the reduction gear was much more intractable. R100 engineers had anticipated the need for engine maintenance "at the mast", and apparently had a gantry for changing engines. (I'd love to know if this gantry somehow hooked onto R100 to winch the engines 200 feet to the ground, but details are scarce.)  But, annoyingly, the gantry was at Cardington, and there were no spare engines. So R100 was going back across the Atlantic on 5. Upon leaving, WC Colmore said he hoped that R100 would be back before this time next year.

Camping Trip in the Sky

So the intrepid travelers got back in R100, and set a course down the St. Lawrence to the ocean. R100 released the docking mast on the 13th of August at 9:30 PM, to the cheers of thousands who had come to St. Hubert to see her off. R100 carried more passengers on the return trip, four reporters from Canada, and four reporters from the major wire services and Britain newspapers. Also, at the request of the Canadian Prime Minister, R.B. Bennett, a M. Jacques Cartier, a descendant of the famous explorer (and a Montreal journalist) was along for the ride. Canada sent along Group Captian EW Steadman, the RCAF's chief aeronautical engineer. The Air Ministry in addition to picking the aforementioned reporters, (and British name fanciers take note) picked Wing Commander L.J.E Twistleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, the British air attache in Washington, for an airship ride. Letters to the British Prime Minister, the Secretary of the Air, and to the Lord Mayor of London, as well as a box of cut flowers for the Queen and three crates of fresh-picked Ontario Peaches - two for the R100 crew, and one for the Prince of Wales were also onboard.


The trip down the St. Lawrence was easier than the trip in, as R100 made 80 mph on only 5 engines. As soon as R100 was under way, the off-duty crew started playing jazz records that they had bought in Montreal. Retracing her inbound route, R100 once again went up the St. Lawrence Strait, up Newfoundland's west coast, and across Belle Isle. (Newfoundland did not impress Captain Meager: "Newfoundland is one great mass of small lakes and forest, a most inhospitable looking place.") Beyond Belle Isle the wide Atlantic Ocean beckoned, with white icebergs looking like chunks of discarded marble. Fuel pumping was once again a popular activity among the passengers. The weather up until now had been clear and fine, but now showed signs of an approaching low pressure system. This was a surprise, as weather reports previously indicated plain sailing flying all across the Atlantic. It turns out the wireless operator was so busy sending copy dispatches for the press that he missed a interim weather report. This caused R100's meteorologist to yell at the wireless operator (and on an airship with cloth walls, everybody can hear it when people yell at you.) Dinner that night was soup, fish, vegetables, sweets, cheese, biscuits, fresh peaches and coffee, and the salon was decorated with fresh flowers. Post dinner, Major Scott and Squadron Leader Johnson (the head navigator) were interviewed by the Toronto Evening Telegram. Both were going to be on R101's big trip to India, and from a navigation and flying point of view, the trip would be far more difficult than the trip to Montreal was. While Johnson doesn't say the trip is impossible, he does seem to not looking forward to it.

The navigator's position at the nose for shooting the sun and stars.

 Later on there was a scary moment when the cabin lights all went out. You can forgive all the passengers if they thought for a moment they were all about to crash into the North Atlantic, but the engines made their reassuring hum, and their ears detected no pressure changes. After a few minutes, the lights came back on again. With a healthy tailwind, R100 was on three engines, which were rotated in operation every few hours. An engine had been rotated, but the crew had turned off the engine providing cabin power without realizing it, and had not flicked the switch to reconnect the cabin power to the freshly running engine. The Evening telegram reporter then got a tour of the working parts of the airship. The main gangway was somewhat dark, illuminated only occasionally by lights. The girders creaked in a ship-like way, as was the ship-like gurgle of water coming off the top of the ship to fill the ballast tanks. A heavy rain drummed the outer cover, and visibility declined to zero. Throughout the night, gale force winds and heavy rain were constants. R100 made only about 40 knots through the murk, even as five engines were brought online.

The outer cover, ever the trouble on R100, had one more trick to play. The constant rain found the leaky bits in the outer cover, and got inside R100. This was a problem, as R100 had cloth walls, which were soon soaked with rain. This rain also shorted out the cabin electrical system, which not only killed the lights but also the electrical cookers. By British standards, the flight had descended to barbarity, as it was no longer possible to make tea. Breakfast that day was sardines with bread and butter and lime juice, and lunch was supposed to have been beefsteak with vegetables, but instead was jellied chicken with salad, with lime juice or whiskey and soda. It was also fairly cold in the cabin, it being a rather damp 7 Degrees C. One hopes the journalists dressed warmly. As before, the guests stated taking bets on the noon to noon travel distance of R100, and the kitchen again ran out of beer.

Out of the depression, things started to warm up again, and hopefully the air at 2000 ft allowed the cabin to dry out. Meager had lost his cabin, having lent it to a reporter from The New York Times. He probably did better than most passengers - even in the spartan crew cabin, he had a sleeping bag of kapoc (an old material used to make WW2 era life jackets - I imagine it was heavy as hell), and a teddy bear suit to keep warm in. The only other notable thing to report was that for some reason somebody let one of the riggers pilot the ship (and having never done it before) he nearly crashed R100 into the Ocean. He thought he was keeping it level, but was slowly descending, the mistake only caught when R100 was at 500 ft.

R100 returned to the mast at Cardington without further incident. The end of the very impressive flight was somewhat anticlimanctic, as only the families of the crew and the British press turned out to meet R100. They docked 10:30 AM on the 16th Of August, 1930. It was the end of a very impressive journey: R100 had demonstrated a few problems, it was true, but for a experimental flight in an airliner across the risky North Atlantic, it was a smashing success.

The R100 engineers also had enough to make an assessment on work still to do. I imagine Nevielle Shute jotting down a list of things to do with R100:

TO DO:
1. Make aircraft waterproof
2. (See #1:) Redo outer cover as per Zeppelin method
3. Look into better cabin heating
4. One thing is clear: we need more beer (idea: substitute a ballast bag for beer bags?!) <---
5. Don't let engine switching kill the cabin power and thus cause passengers to think they are about  to die

The Lifting Cells, too, would need to be replaced: using the current "animal intestines and cotton" method, the cells had a useful service life of about a year, and R100's cells had been filled nearly that long. Total price: 100,000 pounds. Shute returned to work on a fore-and-aft docking mast method to make bringing the giant airships in and out of hangers much easier and less dependent on perfectly calm weather: a necessity for real scheduled service.The next day, R100 was walked into her hanger at Cardington, where she was deflated and hung up. Nobody guessed at the time that R100's trail-blazing flight would in fact be the last flight of the giant airship. R100 returned to Cardington when every ounce of effort had to be directed toward refurbishing R101. The Air Ministry would not hear of any work being done on the R100 until R101 was safely out and back again.

Next time, we return to the R101. Somewhat amazingly even the success of R100 would have a negative effect on the R101 project. I've spent some time already commenting that in the Air Ministry, there seems to have been a lack of technical literacy among the bureaucrats. Well, these bureaucrats (especially the Air Minister Lord Thomson) saw R100's successful flight as evidence that R101 was capable of making a long distance flight too, despite the very different designs of the two respective airships. Or perhaps the R101 had politically to make a long distance flight, now that her rival had successfully made one. It's difficult to say, but for whatever reason, the R101 had a very firm date for her trip to India, and the Air Minister had had enough of the delays. I mean, the R100 came though alright, what could possibly go wrong?

Next: What, indeed?

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

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 5