Rigid Airship - Great Britain

Great Britain

The British Royal Navy took an early interest in rigid airships and ordered His Majesty's Airship No. 1 in 1909 from Vickers Limited at Barrow-in-Furness, based on Zeppelin principles. It was 512 feet long with two Wolseley engines. It was completed in 1911 but broke in two before its first flight and was scrapped. Attention switched to non-rigid types but in 1913 an order was placed for HMA No. 9r which was not completed until April 1917. By then, the war against U-Boats was at its height and No. 9 was quickly followed by 4 airships of the 23 Class, two R23X Class and two R31 Class, the last being based on the Schütte-Lanz principle of wooden construction, and remain the largest mobile wooden structures ever built. The only significant combat success of these airships, aside from their deterrent effect, was assistance in the destruction of SM UB-115 by R29 in September 1918.

The end of the war saw two new airships of the R33 Class nearing completion. R33 became a civilian airship, finishing her career doing experimental work. The R34 became the first aircraft to complete a return Atlantic crossing in July 1919 but was lost in January 1921 in bad weather over the North Sea. R36 was the only airship of the R35 class to be completed; it entered civilian service but was damaged three months after its first flight and was never repaired. Only the name ship of the R38 Class was completed; it was sold to the US Navy and renamed ZR-2. In June 1921, it broke up in the air over Kingston-upon-Hull before it could be delivered, killing 44 of its Anglo-American crew. The last airship that had been ordered in World War I was the R80; it completed in 1920 but was tested to destruction in the following year after it was found to have no commercial use.

In 1924, the British Government launched research that resulted in the Imperial Airship Scheme, which in turn led directly to the construction of R100 and R101. The R100 was privately built by Vickers-Armstrongs with a design team led by Barnes Wallace who had co-designed the R80. After her first flight in December 1929, R100 made a successful round trip to Quebec in Canada in July and August the following year. The competing R101 was designed and built by the Air Ministry. After a series of problems during early trials, it was decided to extend the airship's envelope. R101's maiden flight was to British India in October 1930, but it crashed in France killing 48 of the 54 people on board. Following this disaster, the R100 was grounded and finally scrapped in November 1931, marking the end of British interest in the rigid airship.