R80
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The R80 was a British airship that first flew on 19 July 1920. She was the first fully streamlined design to be built in Britain.
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[edit] History
Construction began by Vickers in the airship shed at Walney Island, Barrow-in-Furness, in North West England in November 1917 to a design by Barnes Wallis and HB Pratt. Vickers had originally contracted to build the R37, but due to a lack of vacant sheds, and a war-time steel shortage preventing construction of a new larger one, the smaller shed at Walney was used instead. This had been used to build the R27 and R29, and the design of the R80 was severely constrained by the small size of the shed.
Work progressed slowly due to labour shortages, and with the end of the First World War the future of military airships was reviewed. The Air Ministry stopped the work in the summer of 1919 as it was considered that the ship was no longer of military or commercial value. Vickers however continued to fit out the ship with commercial objectives in mind but the scheme unfortunately fell through. Co-designer HB Pratt completed a report envisaging an intercity European flight route, similar to that being run by the Zeppelin company:
"The route chosen to Rome is 1,000 land miles which is within the endurance of the ship. It is expected that the ship will fly at a maximum height of 2,000ft. The route will carry the ship over south England, the over the English Channel to Paris on a direct route. The ship will then deliver mail and passengers, and then pass down in a continued south easterly direction towards Lyon. Passing over Lyon, the ship will turn south through the Rhone Valley and the continue to Nice. At Nice on the French Coast, the ship will turn easterly and skirt the coast and head towards Rome over the sea. The return course will be via the same route."
In April 1920 the outer cover was completed and by June the ship was finished. On 19 July the ship emerged from her shed for her first flight. The ship was damaged on the trial flight as the ship had not been properly ballasted, and the lifting gas superheated causing the ship to rise too fast. The result was extensive buckling of the framework. The ship was returned to her shed and repairs commenced. Repairs took until January 1921, and after further test flights the airship flew to the airship station at Howden, East Yorkshire in February where it was used for crew training including the United States personnel who would be taking charge of R38/ZR2. The US Navy made 4 flights in the ship totaling some 8 hours 45 minutes between 26 March 1921 and 1 June 1921.
After these flights, she flew to the base at Pulham Market, Norfolk. There the airfame was used for stress analysis and destructive testing before being dismantled in 1925. In total, this relatively small, but well designed craft flew for only 73 hours.
Although successful in trials the design was too small for the intended use. Many lessons were learnt and incorporated in the design for the R100. One of the lasting innovations introduced by Barnes Wallis during construction was the first use ever of colour-coded wiring for the electrical systems of an aircraft.
[edit] Specification
- First flight: 19 June 1920
- Length: 535 ft (163 metres)
- Diameter: 70 ft (21 metres)
- Volume: 1,260,000 cubic feet (35,700 cubic metres)
- Weight: 38.25 short tons (34.7 tonnes)
- Disposable lift: 14.85 short tons (13.5 tonnes)
- Maximum speed: 70 mph (113 km/h)
- Cruising speed: 55 mph (90 km/h)
- Range: (design figure) 1000 statute miles (1600 kilometres)
- Payload: 6 short tons (5.4 tonnes)
- Crew:
- Passengers: 30 daytime /15 sleeper service
- Engines: 4 x Wolseley-Maybach 230 hp (172 kW)
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Manfred Griehl and Joachim Dressel, Zeppelin! The German Airship Story, 1990 ISBN 1-85409-045-3
- J.E. Morpurgo, Barnes Wallis - A Biography, Longman , 1972 ISBN 0-582-10360-6
- Ces Mowthorpe, Battlebags: British Airships of the First World War, 1995 ISBN 0-905778-13-8
- Lord Ventry and Eugene Kolesnik, Jane's Pocket Book 7 - Airship Development, 1976 ISBN 0-356-04656-7
- Lord Ventry and Eugene Kolesnik, Airship saga: The history of airships seen through the eyes of the men who designed, built, and flew them , 1982, ISBN 0-7137-1001-2
