R100 was built by the Airship Guarantee Company, a specially created subsidiary of the armaments firm Vickers-Armstrongs, led by Commander Dennis Burney.

It made a series of trial flights and a successful return crossing of the Atlantic in July–August 1930, but following the crash of R101 in October 1930 the Imperial Airship Scheme was terminated and R100 was broken up for scrap.

This had its origin in Dennistoun Burney's 1922 proposal for a civil airship development programme to be subsidised by the Government and carried out by a specially established subsidiary of Vickers.

When the General Election of 1923 brought Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour administration to power, the new Air Minister, Lord Thomson formulated the Imperial Airship Scheme in its place.

This called for the building of two experimental airships: one, R101, to be designed and constructed under the direction of the Air Ministry, and the other, R100, to be built by the Vickers subsidiary under a fixed price contract.

Since wind tunnel tests showed that a 16-side transverse section had about the same drag as a circular one, both R100 and R101 used a smaller number of longitudinal girders than previous airships to simplify stress calculations.

The thoroughness of the stressing calculations was a consequence of new Air Ministry criteria for the strengths required of airships, formulated after the catastrophic structural failure of R38 in 1921.

Fewer longitudinal girders resulted in larger unsupported panels of fabric in the envelope, and flight trials were to prove that the R100's covering was barely adequate.

Wallis's solution to this problem later led to his innovative geodesic airframe fuselage and wing design for the Wellesley, Wellington, Warwick and Windsor bombers.

When the designers learned that R101 had been fitted with servo motors at a substantial cost in weight and money they thought that they had made a mistake and rechecked their calculations.

Following inflation of the gasbags, the outer covering of linen fabric painted with aluminium aircraft dope was put in place, and it was completed at the beginning of November.

At an early stage the Tornado was judged unsuitable because of its weight and other problems, and Wallis settled on the use of six reconditioned Rolls-Royce Condor petrol engines even though the fuel, with its lower flash point, was considered to be a fire risk under tropical conditions.

Repairs took longer than expected, and the airship remained in the shed until 21 May, when it made a 24-hour flight intended to test the new engine installation and modifications to the cover.

[14] R100 departed for Canada on 29 July 1930, reaching its mooring mast at the St-Hubert, Quebec Airport (outside Montreal) in 78 hours, having covered the great circle route of 3,300 mi (5,300 km) at an average ground speed of 42 mph (68 km/h).

Nevil Shute Norway later suggested in Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer that the success of R100's Canadian flight indirectly led to the R101 disaster.

The framework of the ship was dismantled, flattened by a steamroller and cut up into sections,[15] and sold for less than £600 (approximately $2,720) Data from Masefield[16]General characteristics Performance