 Chapter 7. Radical Surgery. July to September 1930. We plan, Vince and Richmond, R101's chief designer, explained in a letter to a friend, to cut the ship in the middle and add an additional bay which should give an additional eight or nine tons of disposable lift. On July 29, 1930, workers began the second stage of R101's refit, the miracle, as Atherston called it, to gain enough lift for safe travel to India. They circumscribed R101's cover between the eighth and ninth gas bags and then sliced the cloth along that line. With the cover severed, the workers unbolted the exposed metal framework as clusters of men under R101 counterbalance the lift of its gas bags. Some men gripped handles on the control and engine cars, most though clutch ropes tied to the ship. As the ship parted, half the men walked the nose section toward the shed's four hundred and seventy ton doors and the others inched the sixty-seven foot tall rudder to the shed's rear wall. The stench created in the shed was putrid, and the cutting of the cloth cover released the vinegar-like smell of the dope, the fluid used to treat the cloth. And with the oxen and glue gas bags open to the air for the first time in months, mold and mildew joined the odiferous mix. Still, the work had to be done. The new lift of an extra gas bag added to the five tons gained by shaving weight from the ship in the first step of the refit meant that R101 could fly in the searing heat from Karachi, India to Ismailia, Egypt without refueling. The ship could carry enough fuel to cross the Arabian desert plus a small reserve as a contingency. This modification of the ship, the splitting in two, was possible because of its revolutionary modular framework designed by Richmond. Nothing in Vincent Richmond's manner suggested a revolutionary of any stripe. That quiet, dark little man as a journalist characterized him, adding that Richmond preached lucid and straightforward sermons as a lay preacher, nursed his invalid mother, and played a solid game of tennis. His colleagues at the work described him as solid, solid, reliable, and able in his professional work. Well, none called him gifted as an engineer. They appreciated his tenacity. Nothing interfered with Richmond's work designing airships for an empire airship service. When he took time off to attend a concert in London, he made up the lost hours by working late into the night. This was no burden to him. I'm one of the most fortunate of men, Richmond said of himself, for I earn my livelihood doing what I love the most in the world. What he loved was his baby, his nickname for R101, which was to be the first in a fleet of airships that were the most comfortable form of transport in the history of humankind. These ships would feature, he once said, an absence of motion, noise, dirt, and smell, and so would meet British ideas of comfort. The contrast he had in mind was with the comfort of the Graf Zeppelin, which Richmond experienced firsthand. Earlier that spring, on April 26, 1930, the Graf Zeppelin had flown to the Royal Airship Works. As it neared a large white tee painted on the ground, the ship's nose tilted down, and it dove four times to descend in steps from 1,000 to 300 feet. The captain shut off the engines, and the Zeppelin came down to 200 feet. Two ropes dropped from the ship, and a landing party seized them to restrain the Zeppelin from swinging while it landed. A few moments later, the German airship skidded across the ground. Zeppelins were not designed to attach to a mooring tower, so the Germans had mastered this form of landing. It was so simple, said an observer, that the mooring tower to the south might have appeared a superfluidity. Minutes after the landing, the doors opened, the ladder was dropped, and the captain stepped out, apologizing for arriving 14 minutes early. The Graf Zeppelin had come to pick up Hugo Echoner, the unstoppable force behind the Zeppelin Company's resurgence after the war. He was visiting the Works following several meetings in London, where he had advocated standardizing mooring methods so German airships could begin regular transatlantic service by 1933. Within an hour of the Graf Zeppelin's landing, Richmond boarded it with Echoner to fly to the Zeppelin factories in Friedrichshof in Germany. As the ship departed, Richmond noticed a fuel smell in the passenger cabin, and although the odour disappeared once the flight was underway, he caught whiffs of it throughout the 12-hour journey to Germany. Sitting in the passenger section of the car, he noted that an appreciable drop was felt from the windows when the doors of the control cabin at the front of the car were open. The sound of the engine was most noticeable when the beats of the two wing engines were nearly in step. And the bathroom sinks were somewhat inadequate. To best the Zeppelin Company and meet the British idea of comfort, Richmond devised what he described as a novel and radical metal framework for R101 that deviated from the time-tested design used in Zeppelins. Zeppelin engineers built strong yet light frameworks from the thin, flexible circular ring stiffened by radial wires drawn taut, wires functioned like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. This design to Richmond hindered the creation of a commercial airship. The wires blocked crew members' transit during flights from bow to stern, preventing them from servicing the ship. The thin Zeppelin rings had no stowage for fuel, ballast equipment or luggage, a low priority of course for those wartime airships. And even if a Zeppelin had stowage, it lacked the lift to haul a significant payload. Payload was traded off in a wartime Zeppelin for altitude. A Zeppelin soared to 10,000 feet to escape enemy fire and detection. A commercial airship like R101 rose no higher than 2,500 feet. This inverse relationship between altitude and payload occurs because an airship's gas bags expand as the ship rises. To reach high altitudes, the gas bags of a wartime Zeppelin were partly inflated at ground level, which resulted in lower lift than if the bags were fully inflated. In contrast, a commercial ship like R101 was designed for large payloads, not for avoiding discovery. The gas banks of R101 were inflated at ground level to over 90% of their full volume, so they traded altitude for payload. Although these were all significant considerations for Richmond in his design of R101, the Zeppelin frameworks also limited his plans to build a fleet. The Zeppelin designs precluded mass manufacturing and airship. To build Zeppelins, workers first riveted metal sections to create flexible, unwieldy rings. They then hoisted the flimsy rings into the air and tightened the wires to stiffen them before joining the rings with long bars. To attach these bars required a skilled worker to hand-fit a custom gusset plate, a thick sheet of steel used to connect beams and girders to each ring. In Richmond's opinion, this erection work is costly and slow, especially if much of it has to be carried out at considerable height above the ground. So with R101, he changed the manufacture of airships from hand-crafted masterpieces assembled by artisans pounding in rivets to mass-manufactured products assembled by semi-skilled workers using nuts and bolts. R101's metal framework was constructed as if from a giant erector or mechanoset. The new bay for R101 arrived in hundreds of pieces from the construction firm Bolton & Paul Limited a few days after workers split the ship in two. Each piece was built to Richmond's exacting specifications and tolerance, for example, of just 3,007 inch and a 45-foot girder so its holes would align with the other parts. The new girders were piled on the shed floor alongside the space between the halves of the airship. Without haste, though, workers brought order to the shed. Using nuts and bolts, not rivets, they assembled the girders to create the two rings that formed the ends of the new bay. The rings were so rigid, Richmond eliminated wires by thickening the zeppelin rings that workers could add, he said, all the fuel and water-stowage, branch panes, ladders, gas-bag nets, etc. as the rings lay flat on the shed floor. Once outfitted, the rings were hoisted into the air and positioned between the halves of the ship and then bolted to its two ends with long bars, no time-consuming gusset plates needed. By late September 1930, the refitted R101 was ready. In only five weeks, the men had bolted the bay into place inserted and inflated an additional gas-bag and attached a cloth cover to the new framework. This rapid lengthening that had grown from 735 to 777 feet of the world's largest craft was a triumph for Richmond's modular framework. Such a change would be impossible in a handcrafted zeppelin. The Times reported that R101 was now the biggest and longest airship in the world, noting as an afterthought that it always had been the biggest or cubic capacity has always been much greater than that of the graph zeppelin. The Times focused on the external changes to R101 but unnoticed by them was the addition of 4,000 pads between the gas-bags and the framework. This additional padding was to overcome the recommendation a month earlier of the work's resident inspector, Frederick McWade, to deny a permit to fly for R101. He was overruled by the director of the Aeronautical Inspection Directorate, AID. The AID director, Colonel H. W. S. Outram, with his inspectors helped develop Britain as a worldwide power in aviation. The high regard in which the world held British aviation, Flight Magazine wrote, owes much to him. With superb organizational skill, Outram had grown AID from its start in a room a little wider than a table where all the records fit in a single index card box into an organization where hundreds of staff coordinated the inspection of all hangers, tents, machine tools, raw materials and fabrics used to make airplanes and airships. So thorough was the work of Outram's inspectors that aircraft manufacturers joke that AID stood for anything inferior detected. Outram's skill as an administrator created the powerful AID but what sustained it was his personal touch. Outram had VIP status in the British aviation world. He rarely skipped a chance to judge an air contest, attend the annual de Havilland Ball, or reunite with his friends from manufacturer Handley Page at Lloyd's Register Cricket Club, while simultaneously hobnobbing with officials from Lloyd's, the major insurer of airplanes. And whenever a famous aviation star celebrated, Outram, sporting his AID tie, lifted a glass, when the Daily Mail staged a grand luncheon at the Savoy Hotel for Amy Johnson, the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia, Outram was present, brushing shoulders with glitteraté such as Noel Coward. When Sam Sanders, builder of Flying Boats, celebrated his golden wedding anniversary, Outram was among the guests. When Handley Page Limited, Britain's first publicly traded aircraft manufacturer, delivered a new aircraft to Imperial Airways, Frederick Handley Page himself rode on the flight with Colonel Outram at his side, billed as distinguished cargo. So when Outram needed to decide on McWade's recommendation to deny a permit to fly, he phoned the Royal Airship Works senior official, Wing Commander Reginald Colmore, and asked him to respond in writing to McWade's memo. At the works, Colmore was known as the head of the Big Three, Colmore, Scott and Richmond. Colmore, as Director of Airship Development, approved every decision about R-101 and its sibling, R-100, but he relied strongly for advice on Scott and Richmond. Scott, as Assistant Director of Airship Development, Flying and Training, advised on all decisions of when and where either airship flew, while Richmond, Assistant Director of Airship Development, technical conferred with Colmore on all technical issues. Outram's request brought into conflict two facets of Colmore's personality. He was a dreamer who wanted to build the largest airship in the world, but also a cautious man who often counseled moderation at the works. That conflict was the essence of Colmore, a study in contradictions. He was the courageous man who led an armed car division into battle at Antwerp and Gallipoli in the First World War, yet feared flying. Although shy, he's shown as a leader of men and organizer of material. His innovative anti-submarine patrols, the combined airships and sea planes earned him rapid promotion in the Royal Naval Air Service. They also honed the skills of pilots Erwin and Atherston. Yet so far he ignored Scott's deteriorating ability to fly an airship and his problems managing his flying staff. Colmore believed in the potential of airships to become a useful means of transport, yet was clear-eyed about their limitations. He knew sooner than any of the true believers above and below him in the chain of command that R-100 and R-101 could not fly in any weather, that they were mostly useful for travel in the summer, were over the sea where the air was smooth. Still he'd dreamed of building a ship larger than R-101. I have every hope, Colmore wrote to a friend, that he would get permission to go ahead with a supership after the Imperial Conference. At this conference, the leaders of the Commonwealth would decide on the future of airship development. Although definite, he boasted, I could build the ship within two years from the order to go and could turn out a second new ship within eight months after the first. Yet he was a cautious man, inherently sound as how an Air Ministry official described him. When the committee organizing the RAF display at the Hinden airfield suggested R-101 passed twice over the airfield in 10 minutes, diving each time at 60 miles per hour within 500 feet of the ground, Colmore loudly objected. So when he responded to Outroom's request for comment on McWade's recommendation that a permit to fly not be issued, the cautious Colmore, the clear-eyed man who quietly made contingency plans, could have responded. Instead, the battlefield commander of armed cars and confident airship developer launched a blunt head-on assault on McWade's conclusions. I am sure you will agree, he opened his letter to Colonel Outroom, that we cannot accept as a matter of principle that the gas banks and an airship should be clear of all girders, a blunt negation of McWade's central point. Then Colmore refuted McWade's conclusions about padding. I expect you will agree that we can accept padding as a satisfactory method of preventing holes forming in gas bags for this cause. Colmore continued to dismiss McWade's observations. As far as we can trace at present, there have been remarkably few rips in the gas bags of R-101. He asserted that he and his staff at the Royal Airship Works had little doubt that padding would be a permanent remedy, and doing so was certainly not a large undertaking. It could be done by the end of the present week, no later than the next week. To Colmore, the need for lift outweighed all other considerations. In assessing Wing Commander Colmore's response, Colonel Outroom balanced the mission and goals of the Empire's Airship Program with those of Britain's burgeoning commercial aviation industry, which swamped Outroom and his AID staff. He complained of more and more new problems arising every day, from manufacturing methods that were advancing rapidly. Every year, the number of commercial airplanes, engines, and spare parts that AID must inspect increased. In 1926 it was 807,000, but by 1930 had risen to 1.428 million. Outroom believed that as the product of an experimental program, R-101 was in a different class from the AID work inspecting mass produced commercial planes. The expertise in airships laid not with his inspector, however careful and conscientious, but with the Royal Airship Works, the collective wisdom of the best airship designers in the world. After a phone call to clarify a few points, he wrote to Inspector McWade, as you yourself realize it is impossible to alter the whole structure of the ship at this stage. He closed with firm orders from McWade. It is your duty to see that every point which may lead to damage is padded in a proper manner. So McWade watched and inspected as workers crawled through the ship and installed 4,000 more two-ply fabric patches, and fitted with aluminum eyelets to lace to the framework. Some 9,000 patches now filled the interior of R-101. While the workers installed the padding, Atherston inspected the rebuilt airship. The soundness of the cover concerned him the most. Back in early July, soon after the flights to the RAF display, he had walked along the top of the ship from bow to stern to check the cover. To test the strength of the cover, he often stopped and pressed his hand against it, and many places it tore with the lightest touch. No better it seemed to him than a piece of paper. Letting the airship fly with the substandard cloth was, in Atherston's opinion, another of Scott's blunders. His scheduling of R-101's RAF display flights said Atherston was a totally unjustified risk. But now workers had replaced most of the cloth, coated it in place with plastic solution, then applied varnish laced with aluminum powder. These aluminum particles embedded in the cover sparkled in the sunlight that streamed through the shed's windows. As Atherston finished his inspection, his confidence in the ship grew. The cover was now really good, and the refit fixed, he thought, most of the glaring defects. Atherston was most pleased by two new engines. Nine months earlier he had called the engines a joke because they could not operate in reverse. One of R-101's engines had to be dedicated to reversing, which diminished the ship's forward speed. Now though, new engines with forward and backward gearing and reversible metal propellers replaced the two forward engines and their wooden propellers. They functioned perfectly, he said, and he enjoyed each engine's most unheard of feature. It is actually 150 pounds lighter than the non-reversing engines. After his inspection, Atherston met with Irwin to plan R-101's final test flight before India. In May of 1929, Irwin had written a four-page memo on what needed to be done before that flight could go ahead. The list included 39 items to be checked, several days of test in the shed in the tower, followed by five test flights starting with a 10-hour flight and ending with one of 40 hours. Now with departure for India imminent, Irwin said he would like to fly 36 or 48 hours at a reasonable cruising speed in bad weather in order to thoroughly test out the ship. He hoped for at least six hours of continuous flight and turbulent air to test the new cloth cover, because with five forward engines instead of four, R-101's higher speed would apply stress as much greater than on previous flights. With four engines, the airship travelled at 57 miles per hour. With all five engines working, the ship cut through the air at 63 miles per hour with bursts of up to 71 miles per hour. The stress on the cover increased as the square of the ratio of the speeds, so the change from 57 to 71 miles per hour would increase the stresses on the cover by 50%. To check the effects of these higher speeds, Irwin planned for R-101 to return to its shed for a complete bow to stern inspection before flying to India. That evening, September 23rd, Hattison summarized the next steps in his diary. After a successful test flight, R-101 is to start to India about 36 hours later. Every effort is to be made to leave for India on or before 4th October.