Which was the better design of Airship: R100 or the R101?

Or maybe not! Wikipedia says:

At the time, the Imperial Airship Scheme was a controversial project because of the large sums of public money involved and because some doubted the utility of airships.^[94] Subsequently, there has been controversy about the R101's merits. The extremely poor relationship between the R100 team and both Cardington and the Air Ministry created a climate of resentment and jealousy that may have rankled. Neville Shute's autobiography was serialised by the Sunday Graphic on its publication in 1954 and was misleadingly promoted as containing sensational revelations,^[95] and the accuracy of his account is a cause of contention among airship historians.^[96] Barnes Wallis later expressed scathing criticism of the design although they may in part reflect personal animosities. Nevertheless, his listing of Richmond's "overweening vanity" as a major cause of the debacle and the fact that he had not designed it as another say little for his objectivity.

Barnes Wallis had the happy advantage of designing an airship that only made a few successful test runs before being scrapped. The R100 never went into service, and was broken up before serious metal fatigue problems resulting from the trip to Canada had been tackled. It too was flawed, not surprising because the R100 and R101 were both bleeding edge technology, trying to fix exceptional problems for not much benefit. Seems the R101 contained too many untried innovations.

This Wikipedia quote highlights one obvious reason for the failure of large airships as a breed, but probably the real killer was the rapid improvement of fixed wing aircraft technologies:

'The crash of R101 effectively ended British airship development, and was one of the worst airship accidents of the 1930s. The loss of life was more than the 36 killed in the highly public Hindenburg disaster of 1937, though fewer than the 52 killed in the French military Dixmude in 1923, and the 73 killed when the USS Akron crashed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New Jersey in 1933.'

Anyway, in addition to possibly biased autobiographies and capitalist vs socialist arguments, lots of interesting technical detail in the Report of the R101 Inquiry.

Dave

Well of course, Wikipedia is always right, isn't it?

I suggest you read Nevil Shute's account in full, and then make up your own mind. He was not blind to the shortcomings of either ship, or of airships in general, and there is certainly evidence of incompetent design in the R 101.

James Leasor's "The Millionth Chance" is also of interest if you can find a copy.

The views and general understanding of those who have worked on large engineering projects such as the R100, 101 or more recently the TSR2 and Concorde, are just as biased as those who watch on and read the history. One cannot separate one's feelings and "impressions" from what might be reality.

Very, very, few can actually detach themselves and look at a whole project. A lot of very senior people involved in such projects have never been able to do so (and many have personal axes to grind). I would include all those named so far.

JA

I joined the Air Force in the early 60’s and the service was gearing up to the arrival of the TSR2 with its groundbreaking technology when compared to contemporary aircraft that were in service, when the decision to scrap it came there were a lot of disappointed personnel. I for one could not understand the logic of the politicians but as I became older and perhaps wiser I realised that politicians made serious decisions about subjects that they knew relatively little about and squandering huge amounts of money was commonplace. In the end we had to await the Tornado as the aircraft to fulfil some of the roles of the TSR2, but by that time I was at the end of my career in the Air Force. Dave W

........................ and there is certainly evidence of incompetent design in the R 101.....................

Is it possible to elaborate on this evidence?

to my mind filling the thing with hydrogen was the biggest one

Unfortunately the USA had a monopoly in helium and it was far more expensive than hydrogen that could be produced anywhere. Helium produces less lift than hydrogen and lift is what the R101 appears to have been short of. Therefore the decision to follow the standard practice and experience of the time by using hydrogen makes sense. Using helium does not.

The trouble with non technical people being ultimately in charge of an engineering project is that their "Can you just?" is thought to only occupy ten minutes, when in reality it will actually take ten hours, IF all goes well.

Very early on in my career, I heard of a sub contract job that our company had taken on for a nuclear project. It called for a sphere, six feet in diameter, with one 6 inch aperture, to be machined all over INTERNALLY as well externally

After being asked how he thought the job would be done, the designer changed it to two hemispheres joined by a multi bolt flange.

The risk to major engineering projects, in terms of timescale and budget, is the engineer who wants to incorporate the very latest technical innovation, at every opportunity. Rolls Royce RB211 springs to mind!.

Sadly, one of the causes of the Beauvais crash was the political pressure to make the journey to India at that time, before development had progressed sufficiently far for the airship to be even remotely safe.

Even today, aircraft crash, but the risks are much lower than when Cayley's carriage driver, Pilcher, or the Wright brothers took to the air.

Howard

" I for one could not understand the logic of the politicians but as I became older and perhaps wiser I realised that politicians made serious decisions about subjects that they knew relatively little about and squandering huge amounts of money was commonplace."

And still do.

HS2?

Regards Ian

Strange we should be discussing aerostats because one coming down woke me up this morning!

The pilot was blipping the burner to control his rate of descent and I guess he landed successfully in the field behind that house. (Only two power lines cross it!) No sirens, power cuts or other fuss so I guess the landing went well.

Any hot-air balloon pilots on the forum? I wondered why he chose to land when and where he did. It is because the air warms up as the sun rises and reduces lift, or did he know the wind was getting up? (Slight flow to the SW when the photo was taken, now an hour later, swung NW and tree foliage is bouncing noticeably.) Or maybe low on fuel if he took off at dawn, about 0500? The balloons course was taking it towards a steep hill with a deep drop behind leaving him about 200m above ground after cresting it , so perhaps the field he landed in was the best available; fairly flat grass, no animals, and quiet road access on two sides for recovery vehicles.

Dave

With dusk falling fast and a 900' to get over coming up fast I watched a hotair balloon try several landings as he was taken towards the hill. He finally put down at the foot of the hill in a difficult possition, but kept the envelope inflated. He sat there for 5 mins or more then took off and flew against the OBVIOUS wind to a field near a road. He had picked up a back draft or eddy from the face of the very steep hill, I was immpressed and thought, very clever ! Noel.

Dave

I know we are near neighbours. Was it a Virgin balloon?

I pulled back the bedroom curtains on Friday morning to find a Virgin balloon, 300 yards away at about 100 feet, heading straight for my window. Fortunately he managed to gain height and landed along side his mate, a second Virgin balloon, in a field a quarter of a mile away.

So much for lessons learnt. A good advert for Virgin, a group of companies I have little respect for.

JA

I don't know. When first seen I didn't notice any writing and rushed to find a camera. Much lower when I got back and I only saw the word 'University' - no logo's or registration.

Mentioned it to mum who lives in Bath and she saw about 6 balloons first this morning so I guess it was one of them. Victoria Park is often used as a launch site.

Dave

The London Balloon Club , an offshoot of the London Gliding Club at Dunstable Downs was I belive the first of it's kind in the late 60s. The Baloonatics trained and practiced at the end of the gliding day when the hill lift and thermals had calmed . A complete circuit of the field was occasionally achieved by rising or decending into air that was going your way , as you say clever stuff.

Edited By Lee Rogers on 13/06/2021 16:15:11

Thanks to SoD for the link to the R101 Inquiry report - far more than just the bare bones of the accident & suprisingly readable.

All rather sad - the desigers seemed to have tried very hard to use modern (for the time) methods to calculate stresses & loads, wind tunnel test to determine drag etc. but still ended up overweight, lacking lift and underpowered, with many technical issues that, while addressed in part, never seem to have been properly sorted out.

The unfortunate ending appears to have been, like many "accidents", a combination of several unfortunate circumstances (which, individually, may have been survivable) coming together. Insufficient testing after a major modification, over-confidence by the crew & designers, politically induced time pressures, imperfect weather forecasting, material deficiencies - a long list of the wrong factors.

I have read several of Shutes books, but not Slide Rule. This, and Stanley Hookers book, are en-route for holiday reading. Thanks for the reminders.

If anyone interested in airships finds themselves in or near Friedrichshafen - home of Zeppelin, amongst other famous "names" - there is a Zeppelin Museum in the building that was built in the '30s as the Zeppelin departure building. Unlike most of Friedrichshafen, this appears to have escaped being flattened in the war & is an interesting way to spend a day. There is a replica section of one of the observation decks of the Graf Zeppelin that gives an idea of the size of the things.

The current Zeppelin is based at the airport nearby & is often seen out on sightseeing trips. There is also a Dornier museum (Claude Dornier worked for Count Zeppelin before setting up on his own) at the airport which it is OK, but not great.

Nigel B

Great thread, thanks for all the authoritative references.

I work in a regulated industry where we place great importance on process safety and substantiation of design, (lots of sums).

Fundamentally in any complex system you have to know what you are doing and a lot of airship disasters, and all the famous disasters of our lifetime demonstrate that at some point someone didn't.

Someday we will stop listening to those who shout loudest and listen to those who know their stuff more. Back in the early 20thC not many people did know their stuff so I can forgive them.

I am glad we know better now about technology and weather etc., its a shame that we are only just appreciating the problems with stupid people.

Having read the comments on here esp with reference to Nevil Shute, and having a copy of his book "Slide Rule" handy, I am in the process of re-reading the book and have got past the R100/R101 section. His analysis of the construction of R100 and they little they could glean of R101 (the R101 construction team were apparently very secretive) was clear and factual and very matter of fact, and I believe him when he says that the R101 was constructed to a higher standard but that the R100 was the better ship.

On the one side money was no object (R101) but there seemed no real independant checking of the design work, and some of the design work was made without fully studying and calculating all the required data (the requirement for unnecessary and heavy servo motors for the rudder come to mind) whilst on the other side they went into great lengths to get the design as right as they could and prove each part so as best they could before they proceeded further, and they had the design work checked, as they had to work without unlimited funds.

The main problems with R101 seems to stem from political interference and pressures and a degree of incompetence - or management more interested in protecting their jobs rather than speak out and say something was not right - at a senior level, leading to bad decisions being taken. Plus there was a lack of a good comprehensive testing programme - which R100 was subjected to before R100 successfully set off for Canada and back - before R101 embarked on its trip to India under political pressure to rush off before it was fully tested and sorted out, a decision that resulted in the totally unnecessary loss of many lives. They, the crew, and the ship were very unprepared and untested, and they took the ship out for a long major voyage without ever having seeing how she preformed in heavy adverse weather.

Nevil Shute also notes seeing a sample of outer cover shortly before R101 set off to India that was in a terrible degraded state because of using a rubber adhesive over the dope applied to the cover, which were incompatible, and the suggestion was that nobody asked anyone who could have advised them on this - and although this is not stated in the book, the suspicion is there that this was behind the failure of the cover over the front of the forward section of R101 which lead to it diving, ultimately fatally into the ground. The inference was that that was a measure of the incompetence of the construction managers/senior engineers at the end of the build, not to ask the question but to rush the job out regardless.

I am appreciative and thankful of the link SoD provided to the report of the link and am only part way through it, as Nigel B says it is surprisingly readable and am looking forward to reading it fully. It's been a good read so far!

Chris

Edited By ChrisH on 21/06/2021 20:31:43

Edited By ChrisH on 21/06/2021 20:36:48

For those who have enjoyed reading Nevil Shute's account I can equally recommended the book written by Peter Masefield "To Ride the Storm" which first prompted my interest in the whole affair. Published in 1982, ISBN 0-7183-0068-8 it gives a very detailed account of the disaster and presents a very even handed view of what actually took place between the two design teams. It may also surprise some to hear that whereas the baggage allowance for the majority of the unfortunate passengers on the fatal flight was 28lbs, that for Lord Thomson, S of S for Air was given as 254lbs including 2 cases of champagne (52lbs) and incredibly, a last minute decision to take a roll of carpet at 129lbs!

Greensands - upon your recommendation I did try to source a copy of "To Ride the Storm", unfortunately without success so far, as available copies seem few and far between and far more expensive than I am prepared to pay just now. I will, however, keep on the lookout for a copy.

However, I did read a review of the book on, of all places, the Nevil Shute Norway Foundation website. From that review it would appear that "To Ride The Storm" was a bit anti Nevil Shute, which was to be expected I suppose, and refers to him as Lieutenant Commander, a rank he did not have at the time, he only attained that rank over ten years later during WW2.

However it did also suggest that R101 was more technically advanced, a point alluded to in "Slide Rule" but tempered with the suggestion that the R101 team were trying to introduce too many new ideas at once without fully being happy with the development and performance of each idea before incorporating them into the ship and moving onto the next; if it ain't broke don't fix it comes to mind! R101 had far more money to spend on the project whereas R100, constrained by cash, seems to be happy to accept then current proven technology unless something really needed updating. So yes, R101 was the technically more advanced ship it would appear but whether it was all sufficiently tested or not before the off is uncertain.

I hadn't realised that neither Barnes Wallis or Neil Shute Norway had been invited to the funeral of the disaster, which seems a bit mean considering they were the top two of the R100 team and knew so many of those that lost their lives, or that following the disaster Dowding, then in charge of the airship programme, claimed Britain had no airship experts left, ignoring the knowledge Wallis and Norway had gained in designing and building R100.

I also hadn't realised the weight restrictions on baggage for all those on the flight which obviously didn't apply to Lord Thompson; in view of the problems R101 had had being overweight with insufficient available lift this seems a very strange but significant decision to allow.

What is also interesting was the speed of development in aviation generally during the 1920's/30's. When the R100/R101 programme was decided upon the airship seemed the way forward, especially for long haul flights across large oceans; it seemed then inconceivable that aeroplanes would be able to have the cargo (passenger) carrying capacity, speed, range and reliability to do that. By 1930 that had changed and airships were longer deemed the future at all. Then in the 1930's, when Nevil Shute was involved with Airspeed the future seemed to be with flying boats and that influenced Airspeeds decision to move to Portsmouth as that airfield was adjacent Langstone Harbour which was being considered as a major flying boat base in the UK and flying boats would be the favoured aircraft for all the major airlines. How things change!

Chris

Some interesting stuff about R101 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixxXhZVFXxQ&t=0s

Something I hadn't appreciated was the reduction in the (very limited) lifting performance of these machines occasioned by using Helium rather than Hydrogen - it really didn't matter that the US didn't make Helium readily available, the R101 wouldn't have got off the ground if filled with anything but Hydrogen (it would be interesting to know if the same applied to the Hindenburg).