This article and The Disaster Channel’s related video paint quite a vivid picture of the R101’s brief history. But amazingly, it wasn’t through either of these that I even first heard of the R101, or took an interest in airships. I owe it to “Empire of the Clouds”, the closing track off of Iron Maiden’s latest studio album, The Book of Souls.
When I saw the running time for the song – over 18 minutes – I knew it must be an epic masterpiece. And featuring piano lines, orchestral strings and bowed percussion, it certainly is. But I never would’ve expected an airship tragedy – a relatively obscure one at that – to be the song’s subject. With a name like “Empire of the Clouds”, I initially thought it would be about some high-altitude civilization like the Incas, some sci-fi novel I’d never even heard of, maybe even the siege of Cloud City from The Empire Strikes Back. An airship, or any other aviation disaster, was the last subject I expected. And yet, that’s exactly what Bruce Dickinson based this epic song on.
One night at work, I had my CD of The Book Of Souls playing on a nearby stereo, and while “Empire” was playing, the idea came to me for a song for the band I’m in, Stranglehold of Oblivion, about another tragedy that took place in France nearly 25 years later. I’ll give you this hint on the topic: It wasn’t an aviation disaster, but one whose debris field look a lot like an airplane crash.

The R.101 disaster was covered in some detail by Neville Shute Norway in his autobiography “Slide Rule”. Neville Shute was the chief stress analyst for the R.100. Shute’s assessment is harsh and some have criticized his stance, and I’ve read through his assessment. All of my quotes are taken from “Slide Rule”.

To see which was the best approach to building airships – government subsidized or private industry the British airship programme (yes I’ll use British spelling) involved two ships – the R.100 to be built by Vickers under contract and the Government funded R.101 to be built by the Royal Airship Works by an Air Ministry appointed team. The R.100 was dubbed the “capitalist ship” and the R.101 was dubbed the “socialist ship”. The problems were there from the start. The relationship between the two design teams was hostile and at times interactions between members crossed over into incivility.

From what I’ve gathered from Shute, the problems went back to the crash of the government funded R.38. “It was inexpressibly shocking to me to find that before building the vast and costly structure of R.38, the civil servants concerned had made no attempt to calculate the aerodynamic forces acting on the ship, and I remember going to one of my chiefs with the report in my hand to ask him if this could possibly be true. Not only did he confirm it but he pointed out that no one had been sacked over it, nor even suffered any censure. Indeed, he said, the same team of men had been entrusted with the construction of another airship, the R.101 . . . The disaster of the government designed R.38 was still fresh in the memory. These were the people, said the private staff bitterly, these very same men all but one who had killed himself in R.38, who were to be entrusted with the construction of another airship when by rights they ought to be in gaol [British spelling of ‘jail’] for manslaughter. Most of those men are now dead, killed in the accident to the airship they designed in competition with us, the R.101 . . .”

To illustrate the level of bad blood between the R.100 team and the R.101 team, Shute flew a plane belonging to his flying club to Cardington on business where the R.101 was housed. By flying himself to the airfield Shute saved some time and fatigue than if he had driven by car. The R.100 was getting ready for her flight to Canada at the time, and the R.101 team was not too happy. Shute writes “. . . but it might have been better if I had gone down by car because any suggestion that we knew more about the air than they did probably rasped some sore nerves, and none of them could fly an aeroplane. My technical business involved a conference with the chief members of their organization . . . they were polite, but nobody invited me to lunch in their mess room although our business was to extend into the afternoon, and I would have gone without lunch altogether if the captain of R.100, distressed by this incivility, had not taken me to his home. When our conference was over the officers and crew of R.100 came to help me start my little aeroplane and see me safely off the premises, but no one else came. Perhaps they were all watching from their office windows, hoping I would crash.”

Politics was the main scourge of the R.101 team. Being government funded, political considerations often trumped technical ones. The main driver being Lord Thompson himself. That if he could make the members of the team, he could also unmake them. Over time this eroded the morale of the R.101 team. This was glaringly obvious to Shute on his last visit to Cardington shortly before the R.101 crash: “. . . I found a terrible atmosphere at Cardington . . . that the crews of both airships appeared to be completely out of hand . . . The officers of the R.100 had been put very much on the side by the Cardington officials and were being allowed no part in the preparation of R.101 and the men did not seem to be obeying any orders unless it suited them which was seldom. There was an atmosphere of cynical disillusionment about the place, very depressing.”

It was on this last visit that Shute came upon what I think was the rotting fabric which led to the loss of the ship and how it got to be in that condition. He was meeting with two of the R.100 officers – Captain Meager and Squadron Leader Booth. They produced a couple of square yards of fabric which crumpled easily in Shute’s hands. Booth mentioned that it came off of the R.101: “They (Meager and Booth) told me that the new outer cover for the R.101 had been doped in place upon the ship. When it was finished, it was considered that it ought to be strengthened in certain places by a system of tapes stuck on the inside, and for the adhesive they had used rubber solution. The rubber solution had reacted chemically with the dope, and had produced this terrible effect. There was nothing he or I could do about it. I said ‘I hope they’ve got all this stuff of the ship.’ He smiled cynically. ‘They say they have.’ . . . Cardington was a department of the Air Ministry and had immediate access to the whole of the government research organization. There was undoubtedly somebody at Farnborough who could have told them at once that rubber solution and dope did not agree; undoubtedly the dope manufacturers could have told them. I think that at that stage, three weeks before the R.101 disaster, they were floundering, making hurried and incompetent technical decisions, excluding people from their conferences who could have helped them.”

You are right Dan, the airworthiness certificate should never been issued. It is chilling because it was a death warrant. Neville Shute cites so many technical problems that were never worked out. Among the main reasons according to Shute were the political arrangements of Lord Thompson that imposed the departure date on the R.101 regardless of unresolved safety of flight issues. In order to legally fly over France, the ship needed an airworthiness certificate, and to meet schedule where there was a will there was a way. Shute writes “Under this ménage practically every principle of safety in the air was abandoned, perhaps unconsciously. The first principle of safety in the design of aircraft is that there should be a second check on the design, conducted by an entirely independent body of experts, usually in government employment. This principle was applied in the case of the R.100; every detail had to be submitted to the Air Ministry . . . No such second check was every imposed on the R.101, except in the case of the strength of the main structure and the aerodynamic design . . . however, they cover only a small part of the safety problems of an airship. Questions of fire hazard, outer cover defects, gasbag and gas valve leakage, servo motors, structural overweight astern power, and engine defects were never referred to these two professors who had no knowledge or experience that would have enabled them to express an opinion on such matters . . . Before an aircraft may fly over foreign territory it must have been granted a certificate of airworthiness from its country of origin. The two university professors had been called upon again to report upon the R.101 as lengthened by the addition of the extra bay, and the Air Council had stated that they would be guided by the report in the decision whether or not R.101should be granted a certificate of airworthiness. The report was never received . . . they [the professors] called attention to large changes in the forces in the structure of the ship as compared with previous calculations submitted to them, and complained of the paucity of information on the final condition of the ship. If they had ever finished their report, however, they would probably have approved the issue of a certificate, but before doing so they would probably have demanded further information which might well have spun the matter out another three months.”

Lord Thompson was not going to wait three months just for a piece of paper. And the certificate was issued out of the Air Ministry. The two professors were still writing their report when the R.101 crashed. At the inquiry into the disaster, Dr. Hugo Eckener was one of the expert witnesses. The duraluminum was recycled from the wreck and purchased by the Zeppelin Company to build the Hindenburg.