by Nevil Shute
It was impossible to insert the extra bay in R. 101 at once, and when she came out to the mast for further trials in June the ship had been gutted of all superfluous equipment and the gasbags had been let out. Immediately she was put on to the mast, in a very light wind, the outer cover split longitudinally, making a tear a hundred and forty feet long. The wind was rising so she could not be put back in the shed, and the riggers mended it at the mast. A second, shorter split occurred next day, and was mended. They reinforced the cover with tapes stuck on inside with dope, and made a short test flight. They then made two more flights in daylight on consecutive days, each lasting for about twelve hours; these were less for technical reasons than to show the ship at the rehearsal for the R.A.F. display at Hendon, and at the display itself. Publicity was important to them. They did no full power trial, probably because they were afraid of the outer cover.
During these two flights R. 101 grew steadily heavier, due to loss of gas; from the addition of the water ballast dropped and the fuel consumed she seemed to be losing lift at the rate of nearly a ton an hour. At the time it was thought by the captain of the ship that this was due to the over-sensitive gas valves chattering on their seatings, but more probably it was due to the chafing of the gasbags against the girders of the ship since the wiring had been let out to increase the volume, which had resulted in many holes.
Some correspondence, revealed at the accident enquiry, took place in the Air Ministry about these gas leaks. The inspector of the Aircraft Inspection Department, whose duty was to ensure the airworthiness of the ship so far as her construction was concerned, put in a written report upon these leaks, finishing up, “Until this matter is seriously taken in hand and remedied I cannot recommend to you the extension of the present ‘Permit to fly’ or the issue of any further permit or certificate.” Nobody at the Air Ministry knew much about airships, and this criticism was forwarded to Cardington for comment. The designers of the ship were thus being asked to adjudicate upon the soundness of their own work, being asked to decide if their ship was safe or not. Their credit, in comparison with ourselves, was at stake now. The palisade was hard around them, forcing them along a road that they never would have taken had they been free men. To put it in another way, if R. 100 had had gas leaks of that magnitude they would have declared her un-airworthy at once, and rightly so.
They replied, in effect, that gasbags in airships always had touched the girders, and that a little padding of the girders was an effective cure. They probably indicated unofficially that they thought the inspector was an old woman making a mountain out of a molehill. The tone of the official correspondence supports that view.
So R. 101 was put back in to her shed. She was parted in the middle and the new bay was inserted; she was fitted with two new engines capable of reversing by an adjustment to the camshaft, the many points where the gasbags were bearing heavily against the girders were padded, and most of her outer cover was renewed.
It was stipulated in the contract for R. 100 that the ship must demonstrate her ability to carry out inter-continental flights by a flight to Canada. I do not think that this requirement was exactly a contractual liability, because to the best of my recollection our expenditure upon the ship ceased when she was handed over to the Air Ministry at the conclusion of the English trials. But the requirement had been written in to the contract six years before, in 1924, and up till June 1930 it had never been questioned. R. 100 was to go to Canada and R. 101 to India, as soon as the English trials were over.
The Cardington engineers, after the June trials of R. 101, began to put forward tentative and unofficial proposals for a postponement of these long flights to the following year. They said that the two airships were in an early stage of development and that neither ship was fit to make a long flight at that stage. A disaster might set back the whole cause of airships in England, and it would be a pity to run any risk for the sake of getting on quickly; development would go better if we did not hurry it. They suggested, through unofficial intermediaries, that both staffs should take that line, and jointly ask for a postponement of these long flights.
Perhaps if we had realised at the time how very, very bad their ship was, how real the danger of complete disaster if they started for India, we might have taken a different attitude to this approach. Their own secrecies concealed the real facts from us; we guessed that their ship was a bad airship, but we did not know the whole story. We brushed aside this approach, perhaps roughly. We said that our ship was perfectly capable of flying to Canada; the Canadian flight was a part of our contract and it was necessary for us to do it. Again, the bitter competition between the staffs loomed large. A heavy loss had been made upon the construction of R. 100. If this was to be recouped from future airship contracts, ours must be the organisation to carry on the work and they must give up. We would complete our contract and prove the efficiency of R. 100 by flying to Canada; they could please themselves whether they flew to India or not. With that perhaps we drove the final stake into the palisade around them, blocking their one way out.
It must have been about this time that a very distinguished scientist visited Cardington to see R. 101. He was, of course, completely ignorant of airships and R. 101 was very big and very well finished, altogether a magnificent-looking piece of engineering. He was shown over the ship by her chief designer, who later was to lose his life in her, and at the conclusion of the visit the scientist was full of praise for what he considered to be a wonderful achievement. He said that the designer must be a very proud man.
The chief designer answered, “I suppose it ought to be a great satisfaction, but somehow I feel too tired.”
5
FROM THAT TIME on the atmosphere at Cardington became very bad, certainly so far as we were concerned. Arrangements were being made for the flight of R. 100 to Canada with very bad grace. For some technical reason I had to go to Cardington about the middle of July; I flew down in a club Moth piloting myself, and landed it just outside the airship hangars. This method of travelling in summer weather saved several hours of driving time and much fatigue, but it might have been better if I had gone down by car because any suggestion that we knew more about the air than they did probably rasped sore nerves, and none of them could fly an aeroplane. My technical business involved a conference with the chief members of their organisation, all but one of whom were later to lose their lives; they were quite polite, but nobody invited me to lunch in their mess room although our business was to extend into the afternoon, and I would have gone without lunch altogether if the captain of R. 100, distressed by this incivility, had not taken me to his home. When our conference was over the officers and crew of R. 100 came to help me start my little aeroplane and see me safely off the premises, but nobody else came. Perhaps they were all watching from their office windows, hoping I would crash.
Towards the end of July R. 100 was brought out to the mast again and we made another flight in her of twenty-four hours duration. Technically this flight was completely uneventful. One incident perhaps deserves a record. In the dark night, out somewhere over the Atlantic near the Scilly Isles, we asked for our position by wireless. Perhaps the two direction-finding stations were nearly in a line with us, making a bad cut, perhaps they were merely sleepy. They replied with creditable promptitude that our position was two miles south west of Guildford. Major Scott made a signal in reply: “Many thanks for position; sea very rough at Guildford.” Politeness invariably pays.
This was the seventh flight that R. 100 made, and the last before she crossed the Atlantic. There were no troubles to be rectified, and little to be done before we started off except to put more fuel on board. We returned from this flight on Saturday. On the following Tuesday morning we set off for Montreal.
Looking back upon those days, I have sometimes wondered if we were very rash in taking the Atlantic flight so early in the ship’s career. On the whole I do not think we were. R. 100 had made only seven flights before we started for Canada, but
in those flights she had flown over a hundred and fifty hours and had covered seven or eight thousand miles. She had repeatedly been flown at full speed, and she had flown for long periods in very bad weather. We had no reason to anticipate any trouble with the engines, as these were of a well proved aeroplane type.
At the same time, there is no doubt that our Atlantic crossing was dictated by political motives alone, as in the case of the Indian flight of R. 101. It is doubtful if any responsible technician would assert that a large and totally experimental aircraft is fit to cross the Atlantic on its eighth flight; the most that he could say would be, as I said, that he knew of nothing that would prevent it doing so in safety. This guarded approval of the project was all that could fairly be given at that stage. In that respect our position was precisely similar to that of the designers of the R. 101, except that we had more flight experience behind us, and a better ship. Considered purely from the technical aspect, it was not very prudent for either airship to attempt a long flight at that stage of development. We did it, and got away with it.
Whenever I make a lengthy or an interesting journey I usually keep a diary, and my diary tells me that I spent the Sunday on the ship with the crew, making a very comprehensive inspection. One of our many petrol tanks was leaking a little, and we changed it for a new one. I went to London about midday on Monday, buying an overall and rubber shoes on the way, and reported to Burney that we were ready to start. That evening, at my club in Pall Mall, telephone calls confirmed the start for 3.30 the next morning. So I stood myself a very good and expensive dinner, followed by a glass of brandy and a cigar, read a novel by A. P. Herbert for a couple of hours to my great content, went to Burney’s house with my linen kitbag, and drove with him to Cardington in the middle of the night. On this flight Sir Dennis Burney and I represented the constructors, and a Lieut.-Cdr. Prentice represented the Admiralty; three members of the Cardington party travelled with us, and a representative of the Aircraft Inspection Department.
The diary, written during the flight, may tell most of the story from now onwards. For July 29th 1930:
We slipped at 3.50 a.m., summer time. We have 34.5 tons of petrol on board, which should be ample. At the last moment the ship was light, and we delayed some time in filling up two emergency water bags (½ ton) forward. We slipped with practically full emergency ballast, dropping one bag aft to get the tail up.
It was just light enough to see the fields. The preparations were better done than I have ever seen them; nobody but the officers and the coxswains in the control car, and everything smart and efficient in the dim light. We slipped, and a great cheer from the tower told us that we were clear. Booth rang on all engines and put her nose up, and we forced her up to about 1000 feet in the half darkness. Our course will take us over Liverpool. There is a small depression N.W. of Ireland; by passing north of this we should get a favouring wind this afternoon. We hope to make good time.
We had a very expert meteorologist on board, who later was to lose his life in R. 101, and every six hours we took a radio signal consisting of a great number of code groups sent out specially by the Air Ministry for us; from this we made up a fresh isobaric weather plot. An airship is so slow that one never butts into a head wind if it can possibly be avoided, and we altered course repeatedly to go the right way round the depressions and find a favouring wind. That morning we went north-west till we were off the west coast of Scotland and north of Ireland; we then turned westwards and found a beam wind, as forecast. I slept till about 8 a.m., and then breakfasted. Petrol was pumped manually to the gravity tanks above the power cars in R. 100, and we all assisted the crew in this monotonous chore; for the rest, I roamed the ship as usual, looking for trouble.
1.25 p.m. A good lunch — soup, stewed beef, peas, potatoes; greengages and custard; beer, cheese, coffee. We are butting along in low cloud at about 1300 feet on 4 engines at 50 knots. The wind is northerly and strong; we are off the N.W. corner of Ireland making good about 40 knots on 270° mag. Everyone a little comatose after lunch, and the crew are playing their gramophone— ‘Can’t help loving that man of mine’. Probably we shall head a little south soon and get south of a high pressure area down there, and so find a favouring wind. Sea about Force 5 and very desolate; it beats us all how anyone should have the courage to attempt the Atlantic in an aeroplane.
In R. 100 the passenger coach was within the hull about one third of the ship’s length from the bow; large windows in the outer cover permitted quite a good view from the passengers’ promenade decks. The control car was immediately beneath the passenger coach, outside the contour of the hull. All three power cars were aft of that, the nearest being about 120 feet aft. The passenger coach and the control car were therefore practically noiseless, and the gramophone was heard as clearly as in a house on land. The walls dividing the cabins were of fabric, so that a man snoring in the next cabin could be a real nuisance at night; so quiet was the ship.
Wednesday July 30th, 8.40 a.m. zone time (G.M.T.–2) Position is about 54° 20’N and 35°W. We altered course a little in the night to steer rather more northwards, heading for Belle Isle at the north of Newfoundland and the entrance to the St. Lawrence. This because the meteorological chart made up at 1 a.m. disclosed a shallow depression east of Newfoundland. By going round the top of this we shall get a following wind, and this we have now actually got and have had for about a couple of hours. We are cruising at 50 knots on four engines, but are making good 74 knots over the ground, on practically a due westerly course. This is fine, and we hope to pick up Belle Isle about 900 miles from here this evening. We are running in thick fog.
Gasbag 7 appears to be leaking as it was when we started and has risen a good bit; the others are holding well.
I slept splendidly in pyjamas, sheets, sleeping bag, and blanket from 11 p.m. to 7.30 a.m. There has been no motion of the ship whatever on this flight. Pumped petrol before turning in and again before breakfast this morning. 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.
11.0 a.m. zone time (G.M.T.–3) We had a sweepstake on the day’s run, noon to noon G.M.T. Eldridge won it with 1095 sea miles; we are doing much better now.
Everything in the ship is satisfactory. In the fins this morning I came on Deverell repairing a little chafed hole in the cover about the size of a penny; the crew are continually on the look out for incipient damage of this sort and take it before it has time to get very far. They did a little sewing and doping on the top elastic hinge strip of the port elevator yesterday in anticipation of damage that had not yet happened. A good, keen crew.
We have just stopped the aft engine in the aft car and put on one of the wing car engines to replace it, still running on four engines. A flexible water pipe to the radiator is chafing on the car structure and something has to be done about it. This is the first time we have had to stop an engine for adjustment or repair; the job will take about an hour.
4.30 p.m. zone time (G.M.T.-4) The fair wind has gone and we have a 20 knot wind against us, very nearly dead ahead; this is in accordance with our prediction from the depression centred about Hudson Bay. We have put on power and are now running on six engines, the forward ones at 1500 r.p.m. and the aft ones at 1600 r.p.m. This gives us about 58 knots (or 66 m.p.h.) and we are making good about 42 knots over the ground. Belle Isle is just about 100 sea miles ahead.
It has turned cold and grey; visibility is moderate between frequent rain showers. At this speed pumping petrol is serious work; in a larger ship it will be necessary to put in mechanical pumps.
Thursday July 31st 2.30 a.m. zone time. We are well inside Newfoundland running up the St. Lawrence River: had asked to be called to help pump petrol. We are still running on 6 engines at 58 knots, but have a head wind and are only making good about 36 knots over the ground.
Johnston is asleep in a chair in the saloon, in Teddy and uniform cap. He is a splendid navigator and works like a horse; I believe he had only two hours’ sleep last night.
A Teddy was a combination flying suit used only in airships; it was made of Teddy Bear fleece inside and out. Airships were normally unheated and were difficult to heat technically, though we had an elementary electrical heating system in R. 100. I had a Teddy issued to me for the flight; I never had occasion to wear it, but it was a very warm and comforting garment for those who had to stand motionless on watch. Squadron Leader E. L. Johnston was probably the most experienced navigator in the Royal Air Force at that time. He was killed in R. 101.
12.45 p.m. zone time. We have been troubled with leaks in Gasbags 7 and 8 since we started, and 7 has risen to about 3 ft below E longitudinal. So the crew set out to find them, and Hobbs succeeded in getting to and mending 3 holes in Bag 7 and 2 holes in Bag 8. They were all 3 inch slits along E radial wire. To help him reach the holes we rose to 3000 feet, to bring the bag to him. A good show on his part; those holes would fully account for the loss of gas.
These holes were on the flat surface of the gasbags, as it might be on the flat end of a cylindrical cheese. If they had been on the sides of the bag it would have been easy to find and repair them. To reach these holes meant a somewhat hazardous climb along the radial wires between the bags, with some danger of being gassed by the hydrogen issuing from the holes. Hydrogen is fairly easily detected, however; it has a peculiar warning of its presence, more of a savour than a smell. I do not think it is toxic; a man gassed by hydrogen recovers quite quickly in clean air. The danger in this case lay in falling, for it was impossible to provide the rigger with any form of safety line.
