Zeppelinheim

HMA R-100 was one half of the Imperial Airship Scheme. The brainchild of Christopher Thomson, the British Minister of Air, the Scheme, was a farsighted plan to connect the far flung colonies of the “empire on which the sun never set”, with regular, reliable, and expedient airship service. The first ship, R-100, the lesser known cousin of the infamous R-101, was chosen to fly a transatlantic route to Canada.                 The ship was the engineering brainchild of Barnes Wallis (later famous for WWII’s ‘bouncing bomb’ and his various designs for a supersonic airliner) and Nevil S. Norway (later acclaimed as the successful author Nevil Shute). The design and construction of R-100 represented a leap in airship design, going so far as to influence both the structure and passenger accommodations of Germany’s A.S. Hindenburg. R-100's superstructure was revolutionary. (Image courtesy 'Airship Heritage Trust')          ...

To facilitate a complete story of any airship that I feature I will no longer be using the label "Airship of the Month". Instead, I'll have a "Featured Airship" which allows me to take as long as I need on a particular airship E.G. with so much information on the Hindenburg It'd take more than one month to complete a full collection on it.) This will go into effect on April 1st with the Shenandoah as was originally planned for March. In the meantime, to make this post presentable, here are two of my all-time favorite airship photographs. The Hindenburg floats towards disaster at Lakehurst. Two hours later the ship would become one of the most famous air disasters of the 20th Century. The R-101 lit up inside her Cardington hangar.

Before and during the successful Canada trip the R-100's sister ship, the R-101, was undergoing modifications at the insistence of the Scheme's designer Lord Thomson. The technical reason for this overhaul was because, without another gas bay, the planned counterpart to the R-100's flight across the Atlantic, a flight to Karachi, then part of India, could not take place. However, there were darker reasons behind the extension. The R-101 was pushed to service to fulfill the political ambition of Thomson who - as an international politician and a good friend of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain - saw himself as the ideal candidate to be the next Viceroy of India. The flight of the R-101 would have been a spectacular publicity coup not only by bringing technology to what was thought to be a backwards nation, but by also giving Lord Thomson plenty of camera time in the newsreel speeches he was expected to give. The ship departed the mast at Cardington with extra me...

Great blog with both a review of modeling the Shenandoah, as well as a continuing project on the British H.M.A. R-34. jayveejayaresjunk.blogspot.com Cheers, HENDRICK STOOPS