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 technically advanced airships, the R100 and the R101; the R100 made a successful transatlantic crossing to Canada in 1930 in 78 hours. The scheme was terminated in 1931 following the crash in France of R101 in October 1930, while attempting its first flight to India.
In July 1921 A. H. Ashbolt, the Agent-General for Tasmania, proposed the creation of an Imperial Airship Company to the Imperial Conference being held in London. The use of heavier-than-air craft over such distances was seen as impractical at this time.[1] This was to be partly financed by the countries of the Empire, with some funding from private sources and the rest provided by the British government. A sub-committee chaired by Frederick Guest, the Secretary of State for Air, was established to investigate the idea. Although this reported favourably, no firm decision was reached since the members considered that further consultation with the various governments of the nations of the Empire was needed, and eventually only Australia felt that they could afford the investment.[2]
In 1922 the Vickers company – which had been involved in British airship construction since His Majesty's Airship No. 1 in 1911 – proposed a scheme for the development of large commercial airships to provide a passenger service to link the countries of the British Empire. Named the "Burney scheme" after its creator Dennistoun Burney, it involved the construction of six airships at an estimated cost of £4 million, to be built and operated by Vickers.[3] £1.2 million would be raised by the issue of shares paying 6% per annum, and a further £2.2 million by the issue of debentures. Both would be guaranteed by the British government and by India and Australia, the total public liability being estimated at £119,000 per annum.[4]
The Burney Scheme was referred to a sub-committee of the Committee for Imperial Defence for consideration. Although this committee reported favourably in August 1922, no action was taken by the Government until after the 1922 General Election, which returned a Conservative government led by Bonar Law. The new government re-established the advisory committee to explore the financial details of the scheme and also established an Advisory Panel to examine technical and operational matters. This was chaired by the Air Member for Supply and Research, Air vice-marshal Geoffrey Salmond, and included among its members Burney and C. B. Thomson. Although the Burney Scheme was approved in principle, its adoption was delayed by Treasury misgivings about the financial details.[5]
The Imperial Airship Scheme
Following the general election in December 1923 which resulted in a hung parliament, in January 1924 the Conservative government was replaced by Ramsay MacDonald's Labour administration. Thomson had stood as Labour candidate in the general election but was not returned; since MacDonald wanted him in the government he was elevated to the House of Lords as Lord Thomson of Cardington, and became Secretary of State for Air in the new government.[lower-alpha 1]
Under Lord Thomson, the Burney Scheme was rejected and replaced by the Imperial Airship Scheme. The new scheme involved the construction of two airships: one, R100, to be designed and built by a specially established Vickers subsidiary managed by Burney, the Airship Guarantee Company; and the other to be designed by the government Royal Airship Works at Cardington. Thomson's principal objections to the Burney plan were that at the end of the programme Vickers would have an effective monopoly of airship construction, that insufficient provision had been made for the provision of suitable ground facilities, and that the proposed operating company would effectively be a state-subsidised concern but would not be subject to government control. A further benefit of his scheme was that at the end of the initial period there would be two airships.[6] It was expected that the scheme would cost £1,350,000.
The R100 would largely use existing technology, while the R101 was intended to act as a test-bed for innovative techniques in airship design. The two ships were soon labelled the "Capitalist" ship (R100) and the "Socialist" ship (R101).[7][8] Further airships would include the best features from both. Both airships were designed to the same technical specification, which required passenger accommodation for 100 and a fuel capacity adequate for 57 hours flight at a cruising speed of 63mph (101km/h). Acceptance of the airships was conditional upon the completion of a flight testing programme which would culminate in a flight to India, with a stop in Egypt for refuelling. A further requirement was that both had to conform to an as-yet unformulated formula for airframe strength.[9]
The R100 was designed by Barnes Wallis, with Nevil Shute Norway as Chief Calculator, responsible for all the stress calculations. Writing under the name of Nevil Shute, Norway later became a successful novelist, and also wrote a memoir, Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer which gives an account of the airship development program. Design of the R101 was under the direction of Lt.Col. V. C. Richmond, with Michael Rope as his assistant and Harold Roxbee Cox as chief calculator.
It was considered that petrol was unsuitable as a fuel for airships intended for use in hot climates due to its low flash point. For this reason, R101 was powered by diesel engines, and R100 was originally intended to use engines burning a mixture of hydrogen and kerosene. The program to develop the Beardmore Tornado diesel engines was beset with difficulties, the engines being both overweight and unable to produce the expected power output. Similarly, the development of hydrogen/kerosene engines ran into difficulties and so the R100 team made a decision to use existing petrol-fuelled aircraft engines. This resulted in Canada being substituted for India as the destination of the acceptance trial flight.
The initial timetable, drawn up in March 1924, expected construction of R101 to begin in July 1925 and be complete by the following July, with a trial flight to India planned for January 1927.[10] Construction of R101 was delayed by the need for an extensive research program: among other things, this involved the construction and load-testing of an entire bay of the proposed design. R100 was also delayed by the limited resources available, due to it being constructed under a fixed-price contract; it was obvious fairly early in the design process that design and construction costs would exceed the purchase price. Thus neither airship flew until late 1929.
Both airships were overweight, R101 more so than R100, mainly due to its diesel engines. R101's weight problem was compounded by its having a smaller gas capacity than R100, a result of its innovative structural design, in which the transverse ring-frames occupied a larger proportion of the interior volume of the ship. These issues were initially addressed by increasing the gas capacity by letting out the gasbag wiring system, and later by the insertion of an extra bay.
Total lift: gasbags at 96% capacity, pressure height of 1,200ft (370m)
142.62 long tons (144.91t)
160.57 long tons (163.15t)
150.26 long tons (152.67t)
Payload (fuel, passengers, cargo)
11.02 long tons (11.20t)
24.67 long tons (25.07t)
26.74 long tons (27.17t)
In August 1930, R100 made the transatlantic journey to North America, visiting Quebec, Montreal and Toronto. At the end of June, work was started on lengthening R101 and it did not fly again until the start of October, when a single flight of around 17 hours was made. One of the engines failed during this flight and so it was not possible to carry out a full-speed trial: during previous flights R.101 had been flown with only four engines available for forward propulsion, the fifth engine being used solely for reverse thrust when mooring. For the October 1930 flights, all five engines were used for forward propulsion, two being modified so that they could also provide reverse thrust.
On 4 October 1930, with a hastily issued Certificate of Airworthiness, R101 set off to make its proving flight to India under unfavourable weather conditions. After seven hours in the air it crashed and caught fire near Beauvais in northern France, killing 48 of the 54 aboard, including Lord Thomson and V. C. Richmond. The exact cause is still a matter of dispute amongst airship enthusiasts and historians. Sir Peter Masefield lists thirteen factors in his detailed history of R101:[12] without any one of them the disaster might not have happened. The desire of all involved to achieve the flight to India before the conclusion of the 1930 Imperial Conference (at which decisions would be taken on the future of the airship programme) led to a premature flight in adverse weather conditions.[13]
Intended development
Even before R100 and R101 were flown, it was realised that they were too small to carry a significant payload over the intended routes. A design study carried out at Cardington in February 1929 demonstrated that in order to meet the original operational requirement an airship of 9,300,000 cubic feet (260,000m3) would be necessary.[14] The construction of an airship of nearly twice the volume of the existing designs was considered to require a substantial amount of research and would also necessitate the construction of a new larger shed at Cardington, and so in August 1930 a decision was made to construct two airships, R102 and R103, of 7,500,000 cubic feet (210,000m3) capacity. It was expected that these would be capable of carrying 50 passengers and ten tons of cargo for 4,000mi (6,400km).[15]
Starting in 1931, it was proposed to run services from Cardington to Karachi and Montreal using R100 and R101 (which would also be lengthened). In 1934 the R102 would enter service, and in 1935 the R103 would be added. The four airships would offer monthly return services to Montreal and Karachi, and a weekly service to Ismailia in Egypt. A service to Australia was to start in 1936, and an even larger airship, the R104, was proposed.
But on 31 August 1931 the Cabinet decided to abandon British airship development, although Cardington would still keep a watching brief on overseas developments.[16] The R100 was broken up. Proposals for the planned R102, R103 and R104 were abandoned. The loss of R101, the deepening world depression, and doubts about the optimistic financial forecasts, were all factors in these decisions.
Air routes to the Empire were instead pioneered by Imperial Airways starting in 1929, initially using flying boats and later landplanes.
↑ The MacDonald ministry lost power in November 1924 and Thomson did not return to the post until 1929.
↑ Shute, Nevil, Slide Rule. London: William Heinemann, 1954 page 56: "It was generally agreed in 1924 that the aeroplane would never be a very suitable vehicle for carrying passengers across the oceans, and that airships would operate all the long-distance routes of the future.
↑ Ian Philpott, Preface of "The Royal Air Force - Volume 2: An Encyclopedia of the Inter-War Years 1930-1939"
↑ Lyth, Peter, "R101: A Pictorial History / Concorde: The Inside Story", The Journal of Transport History, Manchester University Press, vol.22, no.2 (September 2001), archived from the original on 2 October 2015, citing Nick le Neve Walmsley, R101: a pictorial history, Sutton Publishing, Stroud (2000)
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 Air.
Nevil Shute Norway 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 his engineering career from inferences by his employers (Vickers) or from fellow engineers that he was '"not a serious person" or from potentially adverse publicity in connection with his novels, which included On the Beach and A Town Like Alice.
R101 was one of a pair of British rigid airships completed in 1929 as part of the Imperial Airship Scheme, 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 Ministry–appointed team and was effectively in competition with the government-funded but privately designed and built R100. When built, it was the world's largest flying craft at 731 ft (223 m) in length, and it was not surpassed by another hydrogen-filled rigid airship until the LZ 129 Hindenburg was launched seven years later.
The R.38 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 originally ordered by the Admiralty, but orders for three of these were cancelled after the armistice with Germany and R.38, the lead ship of the class, was sold to the United States Navy in October 1919 before completion.
Christopher Birdwood Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson, 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 between 1929 and 1930, when he was killed in the R101 disaster.
His Majesty's Airship R100 was a privately designed and built British rigid airship made as part of a two-ship competition to develop a commercial airship service for use on British Empire routes as part of the Imperial Airship Scheme. The other airship, the R101, was built by the British Air Ministry, but both airships were funded by the Government.
Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer is the partial autobiography of the British novelist Nevil Shute. It was first published in 1954. Slide Rule concentrates on Nevil Shute's work in aviation, ending in 1938 when he left the industry.
Sir Charles Dennistoun Burney, 2nd Baronet was an English aeronautical engineer, private inventor and Conservative Party politician.
A rigid airship is a type of airship in which the envelope is supported by an internal framework rather than by being kept in shape by the pressure of the lifting gas within the envelope, as in blimps and semi-rigid airships. Rigid airships are often commonly called Zeppelins, though this technically refers only to airships built by the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company.
Vickers Limited was a British engineering conglomerate. The business began in Sheffield in 1828 as a steel foundry and became known for its church bells, going on to make shafts and propellers for ships, armour plate and then artillery. Entire large ships, cars, tanks and torpedoes followed. Airships and aircraft were added, and Vickers jet airliners were to remain in production until 1965.
Shortstown is a village and civil parish on the outskirts of Bedford, on a ridge above the River Great Ouse, originally called Tinkers Hill.
The R.102 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 built would not be capable of economic operation over the planned routes. After the crash of the R.101 in October 1930, the project was reevaluated and further airship development abandoned.
RNAS Howden was an airship station near the town of Howden 15 miles (24 km) south-east of York, England.
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 model is given as Tornado IIIA or Tornado III C.I. The fuel is described as Diesel heavy-oil.
Alfred Hessell Tiltman FRAeS, known as Hessell Tiltman, was a notable and talented British aircraft designer, and co-founder of Airspeed Ltd.
Airship Industries was a British manufacturers of modern non-rigid airships (blimps) active under that name from 1980 to 1990 and controlled for part of that time by Alan Bond. The first company, Aerospace Developments, was founded in 1970, and a successor, Hybrid Air Vehicles, remains active as of 2022. Airship Industries itself was active between 1980 and 1990.
Lieutenant-Colonel Vincent Crane Richmond OBE FRAeS. (1893–1930) was an English engineer and airship designer. He served first with the Royal Naval Air Service then the Royal Air Force. He was notable as designer of the Royal Airship Works R101 airship in which he died on 5 October 1930 when it crashed over France on its maiden voyage.
Flight Lieutenant Herbert Carmichael "Bird" Irwin, AFC was an Irish aviator and Olympic athlete.
Major George Herbert "Lucky Breeze" Scott, CBE, AFC, was a British airship pilot and engineer. After serving in the Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force during World War I, Scott went on to command the airship R34 on its return Atlantic crossing in 1919, which marked the first transatlantic flight by an airship and the first east–west transatlantic flight by an aircraft of any kind. Subsequently, he worked at the Royal Airship Works in connection with the Imperial Airship Scheme and took part in a second return Atlantic crossing, this time by the R100, in 1930. He was killed later in the year aboard the R100's near-sister, the R101, when it crashed in northern France during a flight to India.
References
Higham, Robin. The British Rigid Airship 1908–1931 Henley-on-Thames: Foulis, 1961.
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