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Doomed voyage: R101 was heading for Karachi but only reached France
In the 1920s, aeroplanes could carry only a few passengers over short distances in daylight, so the answer to long-distance air travel was seen to be rigid airships. In 1924, the government launched the Imperial Airship Scheme and commissioned prototypes to carry out trial flights to Canada and India. The more innovative of these airships was to meet a terrible fate.
One prototype, R101, was designed and built at the Royal Airship Works at Cardington in Bedfordshire, and first flew on 14 October 1929. The other, R100, was designed by Barnes Wallis and built by a subsidiary of Vickers at Howden, Yorkshire. It first flew on 16 December 1929, when it transferred to Cardington.
Passenger accommodation was provided on R101, but neither airship could achieve the original requirement to carry 100 passengers and the capacity was soon reduced to 50. Both airships were inflated with hydrogen.
R100 employed conventional technology, including gasbags and reconditioned Rolls-Royce Condor petrol engines. R101 was a more innovative design, and used Beardmore Tornado diesels. Superior fuel economy meant that, taking engine and fuel weight into account, these diesels had the advantage over R100’s petrol engines for a long-distance flight. The higher flashpoint of diesel fuel was also seen as a safety factor in the tropics, so R101 would fly to India while R100 would fly the Canadian route.
On 1 August 1930, after seven test flights, R100 left Cardington for Montreal, returning two weeks later. The airship never flew again.
Meanwhile, R101 undertook 10 test flights, after which it was decided that, as with R100, the airship lacked enough lift to make long-distance journeys regularly. The flight to India was more difficult than that to Canada, so in July and August 1930 R101 had an extra gasbag and bay installed, increasing its length to 237m. Most of R101’s outer cover was also replaced, although the existing nose and tail sections were left in situ.
At 6.36pm on 4 October 1930, R101 left Cardington for Karachi. On board were 48 crew and six passengers – including Lord Thomson of Cardington, the Secretary of State for Air, and Air Vice-Marshal Sir Sefton Brancker, director of civil aviation. The weather was bad that day, with strong headwinds and heavy rain. The airship headed slowly towards London, passing over the capital at about 8pm and flying at about 1,000ft (305m).
Soon after 2am on 5 October, R101 had reached Beauvais in northern France when it went into a shallow dive, recovered and then grounded near Allonne. The airship immediately caught fire, resulting in the deaths of 48 of the 54 people on board – including all six passengers.
An inquiry at the time determined that the disaster had resulted from a failure of the outer cover, leading to the collapse of one or more of the forward gasbags.
The victims were brought back to London, and on 10 October the coffins lay in state in Westminster Hall while people filed past. The following day, the victims were taken to Euston, where a train conveyed them to Bedford. They were laid to rest in a mass grave at the church of St Mary, Cardington, where the RAF ensign flown from the tail of R101 remains on display to this day.
As with any disaster, there were several contributory factors: the need to meet both public and political expectations; a lack of sufficient testing; overconfidence; and crew fatigue. Prototype testing is much more thorough today, although weight, cost and timescales are still challenging for designers.
Did you know? R101 Airship
R101 was originally 221m long but with the extra gasbag and bay its length increased to 237m. The airship had a gas capacity of 140 million litres and was powered by five 485kW diesel engines.
The fire caused the explosion of each gasbag from the forward to the after part of the airship.