Imperial Airship Scheme

The first phase was the construction of two large and technically advanced airships, the R100 and the R101; the R100 made a successful transatlantic trial flight to Canada and back during the summer of 1930.

[1] The company was to be partly financed by the countries of the Empire, with some funding from private sources and the rest provided by the British government.

Although this reported favourably, no firm decision was reached since the members considered that further consultation with the various governments of the nations of the Empire was needed, and eventually only Australia felt that they could afford the investment.

1 in 1911 – proposed a scheme for the development of large commercial airships to provide a passenger service to link the countries of the British Empire.

[5] Following the general election in December 1923 which resulted in a hung parliament, in January 1924, the Conservative government was replaced by Ramsay MacDonald's Labour administration.

Thomson's principal objections to the Burney plan were that at the end of the programme Vickers would have an effective monopoly of airship construction, that insufficient provision had been made for the provision of suitable ground facilities, and that the proposed operating company would effectively be a state-subsidised concern but would not be subject to government control.

Both airships were designed to the same technical specification, which required passenger accommodation for 100 and a fuel capacity adequate for 57 hours flight at a cruising speed of 63 mph (101 km/h).

Writing under the name of Nevil Shute, Norway later became a successful novelist, and also wrote a memoir, Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer which gives an account of the airship development program.

It was considered that petrol was unsuitable as a fuel for airships intended for use in hot climates due to its low flash point.

R101's weight problem was compounded by its having a smaller gas capacity than R100, a result of its innovative structural design, in which the transverse ring-frames occupied a larger proportion of the interior volume of the ship.

These issues were initially addressed by increasing the gas capacity by letting out the gasbag wiring system, and later by the insertion of an extra bay.

On 4 October 1930, with a hastily issued Certificate of Airworthiness, R101 set off to make its proving flight to India under unfavourable weather conditions.

After seven hours in the air, R101 crashed into a hill and caught fire near Beauvais in northern France, killing 48 of the 54 aboard, including Lord Thomson and V. C. Richmond.

A design study carried out at Cardington in February 1929 demonstrated that in order to meet the original operational requirement an airship of 9,300,000 cubic feet (260,000 m3) would be necessary.