Terrible crash ends britain’ s dream of an air ship empire
They were intended to link the far-flung corners of the British Empire, with their 70mph top speed drastically reducing the journey times to India and Canada.
But Britain’s plan to create an intercontinental airship network came to a tragic end when one of the pioneering crafts crashed to the ground on its first long-distance voyage, killing 48 passengers.
The 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.
The R101’s design team was led by Barnes Wallis – who later went on to design the Dambusters’ bouncing bomb – with engineer Nevil Shute as his deputy.
Shute, who subsequently moved to Australia, is better known as a novelist, author of A Town Like Alice and On The Beach.
In addition to building of the two airships, the scheme involved the establishment of the necessary infrastructure for airship operations; for example, the mooring masts used at Cardington, Ismalia, Karachi and Montreal had to be designed and built, and the meteorological forecasting network extended and improved.
R101 made its first flight in October 1929, and there followed a series of flights around Britain – including a 30-hour flight which took in Edinburgh. Despite teething problems including tears in its outer skin, disappointing power output from its five diesel engines, and without full speed trials, the decision was taken to go ahead with a long-distance flight from the UK to India. A schedule was drawn up by the Air Ministry for R101 to undertake the flight to India in early October, in order that it would be made during the Imperial Conference which was to be held in London.
R101 departed from its home base at Cardington, Bedfordshire, on the evening of October 4, 1930 for its intended destination of Karachi, via a refuelling stop at Ismailia in Egypt.
As the airship crossed the channel, weather conditions got markedly worse, with strong winds and rain. The airship was blown off course, and struggled to maintain altitude. The helmsman attempted to correct his course, turning the ship to take it directly over the 770ft Beauvais Ridge, an area notorious for turbulent wind conditions.
The ship went into a sudden dive, which was corrected, but a second dive saw it crash into the ground at 13mph, a survivable impact. Unfortunately, the hydrogen-filled R101 ignited and a massive fire tore through the ship. Forty-six of the 54 passengers and crew were killed immediately, with two more crewmen later dying in hospital.
A court of inquiry opened later that month, and spent 10 days taking evidence from witnesses. It struggled to reach a definite conclusion, but thought a failure of one or more of the forward hydrogen bags, causing the airships nose to drop, and a faulty altimeter, leading the crew to think they were higher than they actually were, might have caused the crash.
As to the decision to go ahead despite the airship’s known problems, the inquiry found it “impossible to avoid the conclusion that the R101 would not have started for India on the evening of October 4 if it had not been that matters of public policy were considered as making it highly desirable that she should do so”.