His Majesty's Airship R100 was a privately designed and built British rigid
airship
An airship or dirigible balloon is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power. Aerostats gain their lift from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air.
In early ...
made as part of a two-ship competition to develop a commercial airship service for use on
British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
routes as part of the
Imperial Airship Scheme
The British Imperial Airship Scheme was a 1920s project to improve communication between Britain and the distant countries of the British Empire by establishing air routes using airships. The first phase was the construction of two large and t ...
. The other airship, the
R101
R101 was one of a pair of British rigid airships completed in 1929 as part of a British government programme to develop civil airships capable of service on long-distance routes within the British Empire. It was designed and built by an Air Mi ...
, was built by the
British Air Ministry
The Air Ministry was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964. It was under the political authority of the Secretary of State ...
, but both airships were funded by the Government.
R100 was built by the Airship Guarantee Company, a specially created subsidiary of the armaments firm
Vickers-Armstrongs
Vickers-Armstrongs Limited was a British engineering conglomerate formed by the merger of the assets of Vickers Limited and Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Company in 1927. The majority of the company was nationalised in the 1960s and 1970s, w ...
, led by Commander
Dennis Burney. The design team was headed by
Barnes Wallis
Sir Barnes Neville Wallis (26 September 1887 – 30 October 1979) was an English engineer and inventor. He is best known for inventing the bouncing bomb used by the Royal Air Force in Operation Chastise (the "Dambusters" raid) to attack ...
, later famous for his invention of the
bouncing bomb
A bouncing bomb is a bomb designed to bounce to a target across water in a calculated manner to avoid obstacles such as torpedo nets, and to allow both the bomb's speed on arrival at the target and the timing of its detonation to be pre-deter ...
. The design team also included
Nevil Shute Norway
Nevil Shute Norway (17 January 189912 January 1960) was an English novelist and aeronautical engineer who spent his later years in Australia. He used his full name in his engineering career and Nevil Shute as his pen name, in order to protect h ...
as the senior
stress engineer (see his ''
Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer'').
R100 first flew in December 1929. It made a series of trial flights and a successful return
crossing of the Atlantic
A transatlantic flight is the flight of an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe, Africa, South Asia, or the Middle East to North America, Central America, or South America, or ''vice versa''. Such flights have been made by fixed-wing a ...
in July–August 1930, but following the crash of R101 in October 1930 the Imperial Airship Scheme was terminated and R100 was broken up for scrap.
Background
R100 was built as part of a British government programme to develop airships to provide passenger and mail transport between Britain and the countries of the British Empire, including India, Australia and Canada. This had its origin in
Dennistoun Burney
Sir Charles Dennistoun Burney, 2nd Baronet (28 December 1888 – 11 November 1968, in Bermuda) was an English aeronautical engineer, private inventor and Conservative Party politician.''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' Oxford: OUP.
Ear ...
's 1922 proposal for a civil airship development programme to be subsidised by the Government and carried out by a specially established subsidiary of
Vickers
Vickers was a British engineering company that existed from 1828 until 1999. It was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by Edward Vickers and his father-in-law, and soon became famous for casting church bells. The company went public in 18 ...
. When the General Election of 1923 brought
Ramsay MacDonald
James Ramsay MacDonald (; 12 October 18669 November 1937) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the first who belonged to the Labour Party, leading minority Labour governments for nine months in 1924 ...
’s
Labour
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
administration to power, the new Air Minister,
Lord Thomson
Christopher Birdwood Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson, (13 April 1875 – 5 October 1930) was a British Army officer who went on to serve as a Labour minister and peer. He served as Secretary of State for Air under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and betw ...
formulated the
Imperial Airship Scheme
The British Imperial Airship Scheme was a 1920s project to improve communication between Britain and the distant countries of the British Empire by establishing air routes using airships. The first phase was the construction of two large and t ...
in its place. This called for the building of two experimental airships: one, R101, to be designed and constructed under the direction of the
Air Ministry
The Air Ministry was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964. It was under the political authority of the Secretary of State ...
, and the other, R100, to be built by the Vickers subsidiary under a fixed price contract.
Design and development
![CP Steamship, R-100 passing the Harbour Bridge, Montreal 1930](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/CP_Steamship%2C_R-100_passing_the_Harbour_Bridge%2C_Montreal_1930.jpg)
R100 was constructed at the former
RNAS
The Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) was the air arm of the Royal Navy, under the direction of the Admiralty's Air Department, and existed formally from 1 July 1914 to 1 April 1918, when it was merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps t ...
Air Station
Howden
Howden () is a market and minster town and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It lies in the Vale of York to the north of the M62, on the A614 road about south-east of York and north of Goole, which lies across the Ri ...
in
Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...
, a remote location from Howden and from
Hull. Design work began in 1925 while at the same time the somewhat rundown site was put in order and a hydrogen-generating plant installed.
The specially established subsidiary of Vickers, the Airship Guarantee Company, faced substantial difficulties. The contract for R100's construction was a fixed price one and it was obvious from very early on that the project would incur a loss, and so economies were made; for instance, only a dozen machine tools were in use for construction of the airship. There were also difficulties in finding skilled workers due to the remoteness of the location, and a large proportion of the workers were local people who had to be trained. Conditions in the unheated airship shed were also poor: the roof leaked, ice formed on the girders in winter, and condensation caused corrosion of the airship's
duralumin
Duralumin (also called duraluminum, duraluminium, duralum, dural(l)ium, or dural) is a trade name for one of the earliest types of age-hardenable aluminium alloys. The term is a combination of '' Dürener'' and ''aluminium''.
Its use as a tra ...
structure, so that the girders had to be varnished. For three years the assembly work was close behind that of the designers, and the progress of the design work was the determining factor in speed of construction.
Airframe
![R100 moored at Cardington (Our Generation, 1938)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/R100_moored_at_Cardington_%28Our_Generation%2C_1938%29.jpg)
Since wind tunnel tests showed that a 16-side transverse section had about the same drag as a circular one, both R100 and R101 used a smaller number of longitudinal girders than previous airships to simplify stress calculations. Even so, the calculations for the transverse frames required hand computation that took two or three months to produce a solution for each frame. The thoroughness of the stressing calculations was a consequence of new Air Ministry criteria for the strengths required of airships, formulated after the catastrophic structural failure of
R38
The ''R.38'' class (also known as the ''A'' class) of rigid airships was designed for Britain's Royal Navy during the final months of the First World War, intended for long-range patrol duties over the North Sea. Four similar airships were ...
in 1921. Fewer longitudinal girders resulted in larger unsupported panels of fabric in the
envelope
An envelope is a common packaging item, usually made of thin, flat material. It is designed to contain a flat object, such as a letter or card.
Traditional envelopes are made from sheets of paper cut to one of three shapes: a rhombus, a shor ...
, and flight trials were to prove that the R100's covering was barely adequate. The envelope of R101 was also unsatisfactory and a failure in its cover was possibly a cause of its crash.
Barnes Wallis
Sir Barnes Neville Wallis (26 September 1887 – 30 October 1979) was an English engineer and inventor. He is best known for inventing the bouncing bomb used by the Royal Air Force in Operation Chastise (the "Dambusters" raid) to attack ...
created the frame of the airship using only 11 standard components. The 16 longitudinal girders were formed of three tubes each, formed from strips of
Duralumin
Duralumin (also called duraluminum, duraluminium, duralum, dural(l)ium, or dural) is a trade name for one of the earliest types of age-hardenable aluminium alloys. The term is a combination of '' Dürener'' and ''aluminium''.
Its use as a tra ...
wound into a helix and riveted together. These connected 15 polygonal transverse frames, which were held in shape by wire bracing connected to a central longitudinal girder running the length of the ship. A further consequence of the new rules for airframe stress design was that a new way of harnessing the lifting force of the gasbags had to be found. Wallis's solution to this problem later led to his innovative
geodesic airframe
A geodetic airframe is a type of construction for the airframes of aircraft developed by British aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis in the 1930s (who sometimes spelt it "geodesic"). Earlier, it was used by Prof. Schütte for the Schütte Lan ...
fuselage and wing design for the
Wellesley,
Wellington
Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...
and
Windsor
Windsor may refer to:
Places Australia
* Windsor, New South Wales
** Municipality of Windsor, a former local government area
* Windsor, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland
**Shire of Windsor, a former local government authority around Wi ...
bombers.
The
elevators
An elevator or lift is a cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or decks of a building, vessel, or other structure. They are ...
were
aerodynamically balanced but the rudders were unbalanced. When the designers learned that R101 had been fitted with servo motors at a substantial cost in weight and money they thought that they had made a mistake and rechecked their calculations. They eventually concluded that their calculations had been correct: when R100 was flown the controls proved both light and effective, and its control characteristics were compared favourably with those of R101 by Nöel Atherstone, First Officer of R101. R100 was built suspended from the roof of its shed. The individual transverse frames were assembled horizontally then lifted up and slung from roof-mounted trackways before being slid into position and attached to the adjacent frames by the longitudinal girders. The ship remained suspended until the gasbags were inflated with hydrogen.
[Ventry and Kolesnik 1977, p. 137.]
By mid-1929 the ship's structure was nearly complete and its gasbags were inflated. Following inflation of the gasbags, the outer covering of
linen
Linen () is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant.
Linen is very strong, absorbent, and dries faster than cotton. Because of these properties, linen is comfortable to wear in hot weather and is valued for use in garments. It also ...
fabric painted with aluminium
aircraft dope
Aircraft dope is a plasticised lacquer that is applied to fabric-covered aircraft. It tightens and stiffens fabric stretched over airframes, which renders them airtight and weatherproof, increasing their durability and lifespan.Crane, Dale: '' ...
was put in place, and it was completed at the beginning of November.
[ Lift and trim trials were carried out on 11 November: empty weight was and gasbag volume was , giving a standard gross lift of and so a disposable lift of . Deducting for the service load (crew, stores and ballast) this meant the weight available for fuel and payload was .
]
Propulsion
It had originally been intended to design special engines for R100 which would be fuelled by hydrogen and kerosene
Kerosene, paraffin, or lamp oil is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum. It is widely used as a fuel in aviation as well as households. Its name derives from el, κηρός (''keros'') meaning "wax", and was regi ...
but after a year's work it was realised that the engine would not be developed in time and it was decided to fit the Beardmore Tornado
The Beardmore Tornado was an eight-cylinder inline diesel aircraft engine built in 1927 by William Beardmore and Company of Glasgow, Scotland, and used in the British R101 airship when petrol engines were thought unsafe in the tropics. The mo ...
diesel engine that was being developed for the Air Ministry
The Air Ministry was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964. It was under the political authority of the Secretary of State ...
for installation in R101. At an early stage the Tornado was judged unsuitable because of its weight and other problems, and Wallis settled on the use of six reconditioned Rolls-Royce Condor
The Rolls-Royce Condor aircraft piston engine was a larger version of the Rolls-Royce Eagle developing up to 675 horsepower (500 kW). The engine first ran in 1918 and a total of 327 engines were recorded as being built.
Variants
''Note:'' ...
petrol engines even though the fuel, with its lower flash point
The flash point of a material is the "lowest liquid temperature at which, under certain standardized conditions, a liquid gives off vapours in a quantity such as to be capable of forming an ignitable vapour/air mixture". (EN 60079-10-1)
The fl ...
, was considered to be a fire risk under tropical conditions. The engines were contained in three gondolas, each with one engine driving a 17 ft (5.18 m) diameter tractor
A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most common ...
propeller and a second driving a 15 ft (4.57 m) diameter pusher propeller
In an aircraft with a pusher configuration (as opposed to a tractor configuration), the propeller(s) are mounted behind their respective engine(s). Since a pusher propeller is mounted behind the engine, the drive shaft is in compression in nor ...
. The engines driving the pusher propellers were fitted with a gearbox to provide reverse thrust for docking the airship.[Masefield 1982, p. 166.]
Passenger and crew accommodation
The passenger and crew accommodation were arranged on three decks occupying a single bay of the structure and entirely contained within the airship's envelope. The lower deck contained the crew accommodation. The second deck had a dining room, which doubled as the passenger lounge, plus the kitchen, 18 four-berth passenger cabins and a gallery on either side for passengers to enjoy the view through the windows built into the skin. The third deck consisted of a gallery running around the dining room and 14 two-berth cabins.
Operational history
First flights
R100 made its maiden flight in the morning of 16 December 1929. After departing Howden at 07:53, it flew slowly to York then set course for the Royal Airship Works
Cardington Airfield, previously RAF Cardington, is a former Royal Air Force station in Bedfordshire, England, with a long and varied history, particularly in relation to airships and balloons.
Most of the former RAF station is in the parish o ...
at Cardington, Bedfordshire, running on five engines since one of the engines had to be shut down because of a cracked water jacket, and completing the mooring process at 13:40.
A second flight was made the next day, with the intention of making a flight to London, but shortly after slipping the mast, a strip of fabric became detached from the lower fin, and the flight was limited to a cruise around Bedfordshire to test control response, lasting 6hr 29 min. The following day, R100 was taken from the mast to No.2 shed at Cardington and work on modifying the wiring holding the cover in place begun: this took until 11 January 1930.
During a test on 16 January 1930, R100 achieved a speed of . At speed, a problem with the outer covering became apparent: it tended to ripple and flap excessively in the form of a standing wave
In physics, a standing wave, also known as a stationary wave, is a wave that oscillates in time but whose peak amplitude profile does not move in space. The peak amplitude of the wave oscillations at any point in space is constant with respect ...
. During a fourth flight on 20 January, cine film was taken of this phenomenon, which occurred because of the large areas of unsupported fabric; it is also visible in some photographs.
A further short flight was made on 20 January before an endurance flight, starting at 09:38 on 27 January when R100 slipped the mast at Cardington and ending at 15:26 on 29 January after more than 53 hours in the air. Following this flight, it was returned to the shed for work on the cover to be carried out. At the same time, the original reconditioned Condor IIIA engines were replaced by six new Condor IIIBs and some weight was eliminated by reducing the amount of passenger accommodation. The work was complete by the end of April, but on 24 April it was caught by a gust while being walked out of the shed, damaging the tail surfaces. The wind prevented it being replaced in the shed, so it was moored to the mast. It was not possible to return it to the shed for repairs until the morning of 27 April. Repairs took longer than expected, and R100 remained in the shed until 21 May, when it made a 24-hour flight intended to test the new engine installation and modifications to the cover.
R100's contract had originally called for a demonstration flight to India. The decision to use petrol engines resulted in a change in destination to Canada, as it was considered that a flight to the tropics with petrol aboard would be too hazardous. All being well, it was planned to set off for Canada on 25 May. During the flight of 21 May, the conical tail section collapsed due to unexpected aerodynamic pressure, and it was returned to the shed where the original tail section was replaced by a hemispherical cap designed and made by the Royal Airship Works, reducing the airship's length by
Transatlantic voyage to Canada
Shortly before R101's flights in June 1930, the Cardington engineers tentatively suggested that the long flights to Canada and India might be postponed until 1931 on the grounds that neither of the two airships was fit to make a lengthy flight at their current developmental stage. The R100 team replied that their airship was perfectly capable of flying to Canada, and that the Canadian flight was a part of their contract. R100 departed for Canada on 29 July 1930, reaching its mooring mast
A mooring mast, or mooring tower, is a structure designed to allow for the docking of an airship outside of an airship hangar or similar structure. More specifically, a mooring mast is a mast or tower that contains a fitting on its top that allow ...
at the St-Hubert, Quebec Airport (outside Montreal) in 78 hours, having covered the great circle route
Great-circle navigation or orthodromic navigation (related to orthodromic course; from the Greek ''ορθóς'', right angle, and ''δρóμος'', path) is the practice of navigating a vessel (a ship or aircraft) along a great circle. Such rou ...
of at an average ground speed
Ground speed is the horizontal speed of an aircraft relative to the Earth’s surface. It is vital for accurate navigation that the pilot has an estimate of the ground speed that will be achieved during each leg of a flight.
An aircraft diving ve ...
of . The airship stayed at Montreal for 12 days with over 100,000 people visiting the airship each day while it was moored there, and a song was composed by La Bolduc
Mary Rose-Anne Bolduc, born Travers, (June 4, 1894 – February 20, 1941) was a musician and singer of French Canadian music. She was known as Madame Bolduc or La Bolduc. During the peak of her popularity in the 1930s, she was known as the ...
to make fun of the people's fascination with R100.
It also made a 24-hour passenger-carrying flight to Ottawa
Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...
, Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
, and Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls () is a group of three waterfalls at the southern end of Niagara Gorge, spanning the border between the province of Ontario in Canada and the state of New York in the United States. The largest of the three is Horseshoe Falls, ...
while in Canada. The airship departed on its return flight on 13 August, reaching Cardington after a 57½ hour flight. Nevil Shute Norway
Nevil Shute Norway (17 January 189912 January 1960) was an English novelist and aeronautical engineer who spent his later years in Australia. He used his full name in his engineering career and Nevil Shute as his pen name, in order to protect h ...
later suggested in '' Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer'' that the success of R100's Canadian flight indirectly led to the R101 disaster. Prior to the transatlantic flight, the Cardington team could suggest that neither airship was ready for a performance of such duration. However, when R100 returned in triumph they had to either make the flight to India or admit defeat – which would have meant discredit with the consequent danger of losing their jobs. He said that his team "guessed that their ship was a bad airship, but did not realise" (because of secrecy at Cardington) "how bad the other ship was."
The end of the British airships
The tale of the design of R100 and its claimed superiority to R101 is told in Shute Norway's ''Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer'', first published in 1954. Although flawed and not quite as overwhelmingly superior as Shute Norway implied, R100 represented the best that conventional airship technology in Britain had to offer at the time. R101 suffered in comparison partly because of its many groundbreaking but ultimately dubious innovations, and also because of the weight of its diesel engines. In lifting efficiency, both dirigibles were inferior to the smaller LZ 127 ''Graf Zeppelin''. After R101 crashed and burned in France, en route to India on 5 October 1930, the Air Ministry ordered R100 grounded. The airship was deflated and hung up in its shed at Cardington for a year whilst three options were considered: a complete refit of R100 and continuation of tests for the eventual construction of R102
The R.102 (originally referred to as Project H) was a British airship planned in 1930 but never built.
The development of R.102 resulted from the Imperial Airship Scheme, when it became apparent that the R100 and R101 airships then being buil ...
; static testing of R100 and retention of about 300 staff to keep the programme "ticking over"; or retention of staff and the scrapping of the airship. In December 1931, the R100 was broken up and sold for scrap. The framework of the ship was dismantled, flattened by a steamroller and cut up into sections["R100 Meets End." ''Popular Aviation'', October 1932, p. 225.] sold for less than £600.
Specifications (as first flight)
See also
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
* Anderson, John. ''Airship on a Shoestring: The Story of R-100''. Bedfordshire, UK: Bright Pen, 2014. .
* Gilbert, James. ''The World's Worst Aircraft.'' Walton-on-Thames, UK: Michael Joseph, Third Edition 1975. .
* Griehl, Manfred and Joachim Dressel. ''Zeppelin! The German Airship Story'' London: Arms & Armour, 1991. .
* Hartcup, Guy. ''The Achievement of the Airship: A History of the Development of Rigid, Semi-rigid, and Non-rigid Airships.'' London: David & Charles, 1974. .
* Higham, Robin. ''The British Rigid Airship, 1908-1931'' London: Foulis, 1961.
* Masefield, P. ''To Ride The Storm''. London: William Kimber, 1982. .
* Morpurgo, J.E. ''Barnes Wallis: A Biography''. London: Longman, 1972. .
* Mowthorpe, Ces. ''Battlebags: British Airships of the First World War: An Illustrated History.'' London: Alan Sutton Publishing, Ltd., 1995. .
* Pratt, Michel. ''Airships R-100 and R-101: The Success of the R-100's trip to Canada and the Tragedy of the R-101 in France ''. Éditions Histoire Québec.
*
* Ventry, Lord and Eugene Kolesnik. ''Airship Development'' (Jane's Pocket Book 7). Durham, UK: Macdonald Press, 1976. .
* Ventry, Lord and Eugene Kolesnik. ''Airship Saga: The History of Airships Seen Through the Eyes of the Men who Designed, Built, and Flew Them.'' Poole, Dorset, UK: Blandford Press, 1982. .
* Ward, Ian and Brian Innes, eds. ''The World of Automobiles: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Motor Car.'' London: Orbis, 1974.
External links
The R100 in Canada (PDF)
{{Authority control
1920s British airliners
Airships of the United Kingdom
Vickers
Rigid airships
Barnes Wallis