R100
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 The R100 at St Hubert Airport, Montreal, 1930 |
|
| Career | |
|---|---|
| Nationality |  |
| Designer | Barnes Wallis |
| Designed | ? |
| Manufacturer | Airship Guarantee Company |
| Manufactured | 1929 |
| Maiden flight | 16 December, 1929 |
| Fate | Scrapped (1931) |
| General characteristics | |
| Crew | 37 |
| Passengers | 100 |
| Length | 719' 9.5" (219 meters) |
| Diameter | 133 feet (40.54 metres) |
| Gas type | Hydrogen |
| Gas capacity | 5,156,000 feet3 (146,000 metres3) |
| Disposable lift | 54 tons |
| Power plant | 6 Rolls Royce Condor IIIB 12 cylinder, 650 hp |
| Max speed | 80 mph |
HM Airship R100 was a privately designed and built rigid airship built as part of a two-ship competition to develop new techniques for a projected larger airship for British military use. The other airship, the R101, was built by the UK Air Ministry.
The R100 was built by the Airship Guarantee Company, a company created solely for the purpose, as a subsidiary of the armaments firm, Vickers-Armstrongs. The managing director was Cdr Dennis Burney, and the design team was led by one of the most prominent aircraft engineers of the time, Sir Barnes Wallis. The design team also included, as senior stress engineer, Nevil Norway, who found later fame as the novelist Nevil Shute.
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[edit] Design and construction
Wallis' work on R100 led to his innovative geodesic airframe fuselage design of the Wellesley, Wellington, and Windsor bombers. Wallis effectively created the frame of the airship from only 11 standardized components fitted into a non-rectilinear framework. All tubing used was of a special spiral-wound type of superior strength, and all wiring colour coded (a technique invented by Barnes Wallis and used for the first time on R80).
Wallis specified Otto-cycle (petrol) engines even though these were considered more of a fire risk than other engines; the competing R101 used heavier diesel designs.
Constructed at the former RNAS Station at Howden in Yorkshire, the Vickers-built competitor flew to the Government airship establishment at Cardington, Bedfordshire on its maiden flight in the morning of 16 December 1929. At the huge hangars at Cardington (some of which survive), two teams, the other led by the Air Ministry, competed to establish which was the better design in part via long demonstration flights.
One goal was to eventually offer a regular and comfortable trans-Atlantic service, akin to that of the German airships. Soon after 1920, Vickers' experts had calculated that the fare on an airship journey might be £45 in comparison with a contemporary airliner fare of £115 and that the non-stop range of an airship would be far superior, making the journey quite competitive.
[edit] Trans-Atlantic Voyage to Canada
As part of its trials, the R100 made a trans-Atlantic trip to Canada in July 1930 averaging 42 mph (68 km/h). The main Canadian mooring station was at the airport in Saint-Hubert, Quebec; it is estimated that one million people visited the airship there upon its arrival. The swifter return flight, in 58 rather than 78 hours, began on 13 August reaching Cardington on 16 August 1930. R100 could carry 100 passengers at 80 mph (128 km/h).
A song was composed by La Bolduc to commemorate, or rather to make fun of, the people's fascination with the R100.
[edit] The End of the British Airships
The tale of the design of the R100 and its claimed superiority to the R101 is told in Shute's Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer, first published in 1954. In reality, the ship had several flaws which would have been expensive to repair. One was the need to reinforce the outer covering which was damaged by flapping caused by the design's widely spaced frames. Another was a problem with the tail design which caused turbulence sufficient to damage the tail-cone of the ship prior to her Atlantic crossing. To be fair, the R-100 represented the best that conventional airship technology in Britain had to offer at the time, whereas the R-101 suffered in comparison because of its many groundbreaking, but ultimately problematic, innovations. However, it should be noted that both ships were inferior to Graf Zeppelin in lifting efficiency.
When the R101 crashed and burned, the Air Ministry ordered all R100 flights to be stopped. Three options were considered: a complete refit of R100 and continuation of tests for the eventual construction of R102; 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 November 1931, it was decided to sell the R100 for scrap. The entire framework of the ship was flattened by machinery and sold for less than £600.
[edit] Specifications
General characteristics
- Crew: 37
- Capacity: 100
- Length: 719 ft 9.5 in (219 m)
- Diameter: 133 ft 4 in (41 m)
- Volume: 5,156,000 ft³ (146,000 m³)
- Empty weight: 236,365 lb (107,215 kg)
- Useful lift: 350,610 lb ( kg)
- Powerplant: 6 × Rolls Royce Condor IIIB 12 cylinder, 650 hp ( kW) each each
Performance
- Maximum speed: 81.5 mph (131 km/h)
- Range: 4,095 miles (6,590 km)
- Endurance: 64 hours
- Disposable load: 114,245 lb (51,820 kg)
- Including water ballast and crew: 40,325 lb (18,290 kg)
- Fuel, oil and payload: 73,920 lb (33,530 kg)
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Lord Ventry and Eugene Kolesnik, Airship saga: The history of airships seen through the eyes of the men who designed, built, and flew them , 1982, ISBN 0-7137-1001-2
- Manfred Griehl and Joachim Dressel, Zeppelin! The German Airship Story, 1990 ISBN 1-85409-045-3
- Ces Mowthorpe, Battlebags: British Airships of the First World War, 1995 ISBN 0-905778-13-8
- Lord Ventry and Eugene Kolesnik, Jane's Pocket Book 7 - Airship Development, 1976 ISBN 0-356-04656-7
- J.E. Morpurgo, Barnes Wallis - A Biography, Longman , 1972 ISBN 0-582-10360-6
- Nevil Shute, Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer, William Heinemann, London 1954 ISBN 1-84232-291-5
