 Part 2. Troubles. Chapter 3. An Inept Commander Takes Charge. October 18 to November 10, 1929. Although R101 soared through the air on its first flight, the airship was nearly destroyed only three days later, and the clear, still-afternoon air of October 18, R101 approached the mooring tower on its return from its second flight. Clang, clang, the gong in the nose cone alerted Atherston to an incoming message from Captain Irwin in the control car. Atherston pressed the voice pipe to his ear. Pay out main wire 600 feet at Irwin. Pay out main wire 600 feet repeated Atherston to a crew member. He opened a trap door below the largest of the three winches in the nose and shoved out a 150-foot loop of cable, a length that weighed enough to overcome the friction of the winch. As the winch storm spun, its cable clattered in a ring that prevented the cable from moving sideways. When 600 feet of cable dangled below the airship, Atherston commanded, Stop Winch. Stop Main, break on, said the winch operator. Main wire out 600 feet, sir, said Atherston, and do his voice pipe. Main wire out 600 feet, thank you, said Irwin, then added, short pause. As Atherston awaited orders, he peered out the small window in the nose. On the ground, 800 feet leeward of the tower lay the tower's main cable and two guy wires arranged in a T-shape. Near the T on the ground, a small cluster of men readied the tower cables to attach to the cables lowered from R101. Clang, clang, stand by to pay out Port Yaw Guy echoed through the voice pipe. Atherston repeated the order, and his main started the evolution of the first guy wire, the crew's term for lowering a smaller cable, which had to creep earthward and swing freely so it wouldn't twine itself around the other cable. Then, on orders for the control car, the crew evolved the starboard guy wire. With the ship's mooring cables now ready, R101 moved forward so the ground crew could catch hold of the beast, Scott's colorful phrase for connecting the ground and ship cables. R101's nose tilted toward the earth, driven down by its elevators against the ship's natural buoyancy, until a few feet of the ship's main cable lay slack on the airfield. The ship dragged it toward the man on the ground, who prepared to latch it to the tower's 25-ton cable. Atherston braced himself for the moment the cables were joined because, once they were connected, R101 would ascend as it dumped water ballast to draw the main cable taut and prevent it from tangling with the guy wires. That was the plan, at least. Instead, as its cable neared the ground crew, the airship dumped ballast, jerked up, and lifted the ship's cables beyond the reach of the ground crew. The dangling cable was carried by the gliding ship past the tower and into a small grove of trees. The snap of a branch echoed through the nose cone as the cable snagged on a limb. Although R101 yanked the cable free when it revved its engines and circled for a second pass at landing, this movement spun the guy wires wrapping them around the main cable. The gong clanged in the nose cone. Atherston listened for orders from the control car. Instead of Irwin's voice, he now heard Scott's. Scott had taken command from Irwin. R101 circled the tower and returned to try to catch the beast again. As it approached the tealanding, the ship's engines roared and its elevators tilted to bring it and the cables lowered to the ground. Instead, the ship remained level. It was too light. The release of ballast on the first pass had been too early, and it happened before the ground and ship cables had latched. The ship circled to buy time while the air cooled enough to decrease the ship's lift. The hydrogen in the gas bags was warmed by the sun throughout the day's flight. The superheating of the hydrogen above the temperature of the surrounding air increased R101's lift by three or four percent. This false lift would dissipate as the evening cooled. Meanwhile, Atterston and his crew worked to untangle the snarl of cables. They hold in a few feet until they reached a matted section, untwisted it, and then drew in another foot or so. Repeating this tedious task, they rushed to finish before sunset. Otherwise, they would need to use flashlights, a great inconvenience. Near six o'clock, three and a half hours after R101 arrived at the airfield, the airship dipped low enough for the ground crew to connect the ship's cable. The tower then hauled R101 in until the spring-loaded latches of the tower's arm clicked. Scott, still in the control car, issued the command, ship secured. Atterston's crew dropped the nose-cone hatch and shoved the bridge into position to connect ship and tower. Moments later, Major Scott lumbered across the bridge, shadowed by the graceful Lord Thompson, R101's advocate and the sole non-crew member aboard that day. The appearance of the two men contrasted sharply. Thompson tall with ramrod-straight posture, Scott squat with a slouch. Thompson's chiseled features radiated health, while Scott's pasty skin and black rings under his eyes conveyed sickness. Few would guess that Thompson was 13 years older than the 42-year-old Scott. When Scott arrived at the base of the tower, the reporters greeted him as a vigorous hero returning from a long voyage. Well done, Scotty, they cried. They still lionized him for his crossing of the Atlantic ten years earlier. In 1919, Scott had commanded the airship R34, a third the size of R101, from Scotland to New York. With his hallmark press on regardless attitude, he had flown the ship through thunderstorms, overcome unreliable engines that threatened to strand the airship over the ocean, and arrived in New York with enough fuel left for only 40 more minutes of flight. The voyage was so unsettling that Scott's crew demanded rum to calm their frazzled nerves, despite prohibition in the United States. After his Atlantic crossing, Great Britain celebrated Scott as a national hero. He achieved fame similar to that enjoyed by Lindbergh when he crossed the Atlantic eight years later, the 65th human to do so, but the first to fly solo. Scott's display of nerve on the Atlantic crossing earned him a reputation for bravery. Even now, ten years later, newspapers still extolled his press on regardless attitude, and the president of the Royal Aeronautical Society claimed no one had greater knowledge of the handling of such great ships than Scott. Indeed, Scott had invented the mooring tower shortly after the First World War, which led to the giant commercial airships Britain planned to build. Before the tower's invention, airship landings required a large, well-trained ground crew with precision timing. As the airship approached, the men arranged themselves in a V with the tip pointing toward the wind, and the airship pilot flew into the open part of their V, dangling a rope from the bow. When it hit the tip of the V, the ground crew grabbed the airship's rope. This step was the most treacherous because the pilot lost control as the airship slowed, and he could no longer use dynamic lift to position the craft. It became a balloon that either ascended or sank because of its buoyancy. Next, the pilot slowly released gas while the ground crew holed in the bow rope. The airship slowly neared the ground until the crew could grab the control car and guy ropes. If the ship sank too fast, the pilot would be spallased. If all went well, the airship gently touched the ground. However, as airships grew to the size of R101, ground landing became difficult and expensive. The ground crew blossomed from 100 to nearly 500, and the wind had greater leverage in the ship. Even a slight breeze could prevent an airship from landing or could trap it in its shed. If the ships couldn't land safely or couldn't even leave their sheds in high winds, Britain could not run a commercial airship service. Scott's mooring tower solved all the problems of landing a large airship. First, it reduced the number of people required to land the airship to around 20. Second, it enabled the airship to land or depart in almost any weather. Third, the tower offered an easy way to supply the airship with water, fuel, and gas without, as a technical journal put it, the incidence of risk which must always be entailed in transferring a ship to its shed. At the base of the tower, reporters awaited Major Scott's expert account of the delayed landing of R101. They leaned in as he began his briefing. His authoritative yet soft voice competed with the echo of clanking chains and shouted orders from the hollow middle dome atop the mooring tower. Scott explained that although it seemed a perfect day with little wind, a bright October sun, and clear air, in reality the air was full of disturbed currents rising and falling with varying temperatures. For this reason he decided to lay off for better conditions just as a ship lies off the harbor for the tide. Scott added that when he had more experience of the ship and the extent to which he responds to various conditions, he would have no difficulty in coming into the mooring tower. He also noted that the airship had returned early and the tower crew was not yet ready for it. Lord Thompson then chimed in, claiming that the delayed landing was caused by overzeal and a desire to be slick, adding that the ship was a bit light and the conditions for the mooring operations were unstable. No harm was caused and the delayed landing gives experience to the crew. The reporters distilled these comments into two words. Scott was in supreme command. Addiston, though, knew the truth. Scott watched the landing. R101 encountered no disturbed currents, nor did it need to wait for better conditions, nor did its arrival surprise the tower crew. Instead, Scott caused the accident with the mere twist of a stopcock that jettisoned water ballast. Fourteen tons of water were distributed throughout the airship and stored either in tanks or in bags, smaller in size and number than the huge gas bags, but no less critical to smooth flight. The captain used the water as ballast to adjust the overall lift to the ship or fine tune its trim. An airship might become light at its nose or its tail, either due to a gas bag leak or due to gas bags having heated unevenly by the sun. To redress this imbalance, the captain could, from the control car, use compressed air to ship to water between tanks distributed throughout the ship, or he could adjust the trim and the overall lift to the ship by selectively jettisoned water. The two water storage systems, the bags and tanks, were controlled in different ways. The water bags were under local control. To release this ballast, the captain sent a messenger to a rigor stationed at the bags, each shaped like a pair of trousers. The rigor would open each leg to rapidly empty them. The draining of the storage tanks, in contrast, was triggered directly from the control car. The tanks were connected to a pipe running bow to stern. At the control car, a T fitting connected a vertical pipe that passed into the control car and through its floor. Near the floor, a stopcock released the ballast from the intake. One twist and ballast was released during landing. Although this centralized control simplified flying the airship, it also let Scott Irwin moor in it on its second flight. Earlier that day, as Irwin aligned the airship to drag its main cable over the T of tower cables on the ground, Scott announced in his quiet authoritative way that he would now land the ship. As Irwin went near the ground cables, Scott spun the stopcock to release water ballast. His goal was to raise the airship and pull the wire taut, but he discharged the ballast too early, causing the ship to pass too high over the ground cable. He told reporters that inclement weather followed the landing. This was a serious error by an experienced flyer, which caused a three-hour delay but could also have destroyed the airship and killed those aboard. Yet Scott would not acknowledge his mistake. His actions and his dissembling afterward angered Atherston and Irwin, but it did not surprise them. They both had first-hand knowledge that Scott had destroyed airships. Eight years earlier, on June 21st, 1921, Irwin was preparing to land R-36, Britain's first passenger airship, a ship half the size of R-101. Although no passengers were aboard on this test flight, when it did go into service, passengers would ride in a cabin slung under the ship. This cabin would be a sitting room by day but be converted at night by curtains to bedrooms. The Times best captured R-36's passenger experience with a left-handed compliment. R-36's saloon, the paper wrote, was almost luxuriously comfortable. As Irwin brought R-36 close to the tower, Scott took over the landing. He miscalculated the ship's speed and it rushed toward the tower, fouling the cable at the bottom of it. It jerked the airship and ruptured the two forward ballast bags. R-36's nose rose and yanked on the mooring cable which collapsed the ship's nose. The airship hung canted from the tower. No longer could it ride safely there. The ground crew toiled for five hours to untangle the damaged airship, but as they released it and lowered it to the ground, the wind rose. To protect R-36, the current glory of the Empire, the crew prepared to move it into a shed, but the shed was already occupied by two zeppelins, forfeits from Germany under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. To create space for the damaged airship, crew sawed one of the airships into pieces. It took another five hours until finally by 2 a.m. space was available, but as the ground crew attempted to move R-36 into the shed, Augustine Wynne rammed the airship into the shed doors, destroying the middle of the ship. When the sensitive Irwin saw the damage, he broke down because he knew that R-36 would never fly again. An inquiry exonerated Scott and blamed the accident on equipment failure. Despite this accident and others, under Scott's command, two more British airships were destroyed when they struck their shed doors. Scott's public reputation as an airship pilot soared. Privately, however, many at the works knew Scott was, in the words of one of his colleagues, a sick man, a euphemism for an alcoholic. If he were invited to dinner, Scott would drink two whiskey and sodas beforehand, three cocktails, a stiff whiskey at dinner, a liqueur after the meal, and then, if the partygoers attended the movies, he drank another whiskey there. Scott's visits cost us, complained one of the work's wives, a small fortune in drinks. Augustine himself saw the lunchtime gin that Scott often drank. He had impaired Scott's judgment, stripping caution from his natural inclination to press on regardless. His risk taking extended to his personal life, although married and the father of three children, he engaged in affairs. So public were these affairs that many at the works avoided a pub frequented by both Scott's wife and his current mistress. Scott's domestic troubles were intensified by his worries about the success or possible failure of R-101. I am probably, he told a gathering of airship experts, more interested in this airship than anybody else present. And indeed, for Scott to maintain his public acclaim as a hero and his status as a powerful figure in aviation, R-101 must succeed. R-101 must show that giant airships were destined to hefty empire's bureaucrats, workers, tourists and troops around the globe. Otherwise it would become a footnote in aviation history, a sterile attempt to connect all regions of the empire. And he knew that if R-101 failed, Britain would abandon airships as the nation had done once before. In 1921 the Air Ministry had halted all airship work and shuttered the Royal Airship Works. Airships were revived because of the immense efforts by Scott and others was support from Lord Thompson Nguyen in 1924. He became Secretary of State for Air. When this airship renaissance occurred, Scott hoped to be R-101's captain, but was assigned a larger role at the works. He scheduled the airship flights and set policies for flight procedures. His title was Assistant Director of Airship Development, Flying and Training, often abbreviated as Assistant Director, Flying. He was number two in the works power structure, only the director was above him. But Scott controlled R-101 because his opinions and flying were unchallenged by the director. Scott decided when and where R-101 would fly, which enabled him to take command of the airship whenever he wished from Erwin, the ship's captain. Scott commanded R-101 on its third flight when the ship circled over Sandrogym, the British Royal Family's country house in Norfolk. As the sun shone through the last wisps of fog on a crisp November morning, R-101 circled the Royal Estate three times while the king, queen and their young granddaughter, Elisabeth, the future Elisabeth the second, watched from a gravel path. The king acknowledged the airship crew with a simple tip of his hat, while little Elisabeth, her eyes bright with excitement, furiously waved. A few hours later, in the bright afternoon, R-101 approached the mooring tower at the works. The ship dragged its main cable toward the T of cables on the ground when Scott, unknown to Erwin, released ballast from the rear of the ship. R-101 plunged nose first toward the earth. The alert Atherston ordered ballast released from the front and right of the ship. The ground crew captured the ship's cable and the tower crew safely towed in R-101. Atherston fumed. He said the ship would have dived onto the ground if she had not been so light. Scott again caused problems on the ship's next flight. As R-101 returned from a long night flight, Erwin guided it in its tired crew to a smooth landing. The tower crew hauled in the airship. Erwin adjusted the rudder to meet the tower head-on and ordered the reversed engine to power up. R-101 pulled the cable taut. At this moment Scott took over. The wind changed direction and the ship moved crab-wise from the tower, flacking one of the guy wires and drawing the other taut, causing the ship to twist as it mirrored the tower. Erwin watched for the touch of rudder needed to ride the ship, but Scott did nothing. Suddenly a large metallic crack. Only six feet from the tower's arm, the giant ship lunged forward and broke a spring on the arm and the ship's motion wound a guy wire around the ship, crushing a small girder that held the cloth cover taut. Quick work by the tower crew secured the airship to the arm. Afterward Scott explained the accident to reporters. The ship is still perfectly airworthy, he said, but we think slight repairs necessary before we attempt another mooring. Scott's errors disturbed Atherston and the deteriorating Scott had become aloof, rarely communicating with Atherston and Erwin, the ship's captain. It would be rather more helpful, Atherston said of Scott, if opinions and recommendations of ship's officers were given rather more consideration. When Atherston insisted that Scott issue changes in flying procedures and policies to increase efficiency or to enhance safety, it was never done unless Atherston did much caging. Scott's scheduling of flights, his sole responsibility, irritated Atherston. Scott announced a flight with little notice. This caused Atherston to crash right into full flight within a few hours of taking over. Although this late notice upset him, even more unsettling was the type of flight Scott allowed. Atherston advocated for careful systematic testing of the airship, but what he got, he said, was window dressing stunts and joy rights. The precedent had been set when Scott had allowed Lord Thompson to ride a few weeks earlier on R101's second flight. This photo op diverted the crew from what Atherston called work that really matters, like calibrating the bow strain gauges at the tower head and forced them to engage in titivation. The passenger accommodation, Atherston said, got its face washed and hair brushed, all cabins, lounge, smoking room, dining room frantically furnished. This titivation included converting two births into a private office for Lord Thompson, who arrived with his secretary in a large suitcase of state papers. Also the reporters could swarm like earwigs, Atherston despised the press, around Thompson to hear his florid rhetoric. He enjoyed eating breakfast, lunch, and tea, entirely free from all outside disturbance, high up above all terrestrial dirt and noise. Thompson revealed to reporters that R101 would not soon travel to India. I am told, he said, that my hopes of making the journey at Christmas time will not be fulfilled. That does not matter, as I wish to make it quite clear that the men in charge of these experiments are not going to be rattled while I sit where I do. The delay claimed Thompson occurred because of the time required to build spare engines. In truth R101 could not be tested and ready in two months for a long distance flight, although Atherston appreciated that Thompson's time frame for departing to India had become more realistic, he worried about the Air Minister's reckless thoughts on airship operation. Thompson had told reporters that he regretted that the weather conditions were so fair, because he wished to see the behavior of the airship in rough weather. In every meeting with the press he stated that airships were all weather crafts and he chided the officers if they protected R101 from the weather. He was annoyed when R101 was transferred from tower to shed because of gale force winds, calling this action unnecessarily cautious. Thompson's interference diverted Atherston from important tasks. He should be testing the ship instead of hosting teas on board. He should be drilling his crew instead of playing nursemaid to visiting bureaucrats, and his crew should be running drills instead of cleaning up lunch splattered across the dining room. One of the many PR lunches Auguste of Wendt, Jossel R101 and Sint Dishes flying. Of most immediate distress to Atherston, was the imminent flight with 100 MPs. The airship would be taking a good portion of the Empire's government up into the skies with Scott in charge again. In his diary, written late at night aboard R101, Atherston railed against the flight. He thought it damned unfair of the air ministry to insist on flying 100 MPs on the untested ship. He worried whether the ship could even lift these 12 tons of MPs. How on earth it's going to be done? He wondered, and then despaired. I simply don't know. I hope, Atherston wrote, that something will happen to prevent this stupid flight because it is really stretching things too far and only asking for trouble. He will be taking an absolutely unjustifiable risk with practically nothing to gain and everything to lose.