 Chapter 5 Problems with the Cloth Cover, June 1930 Six months after R101 returned to the shed for the first stage of its refit, Michael Rope, the work's engineering genius, crawled along the top of the airship and scrutinized his cloth cover. Once a specular, reflective silver, it was now a dull gray, its smooth surface cringulated. At regular intervals the lean, gaunt rope knelt and pressed his fingers against the plasticized cloth cover palpating it to test for tautness and strength. When it flexed, he cut out a section two by eight inches, which he handed in silence to a colleague. The reserved rope usually broke his silences with rye jokes, but today he was grim. Rope returned to his workshop, picked out one of the small cloth sections he'd gathered, clamped each end to a stand, let the middle sag, and hung a small weight from the cloth to draw a taut. He increased the weight and held at eighty-five pounds the cloth ripped. This failure point was far lower than the typical forces on R101's cover. At the ship's highest speed, the wind battered the cover with a hundred and forty pounds of force, even higher in turbulent weather. A storm would rip open the cover and expose the gas bags to pelting rain and piercing wind. Rope, always methodical, repeated this test on each strip he'd gathered from the ship. All failed the test. He drew a conclusion which he summarized in a memo to his superior, Vincent Richmond, R101's chief designer. There is no margin of safety for flight in rough atmosphere. The cloth cover's protection may seem mundane when compared to the strength of the ship's metal framework, the forceful lift of its gas bags or the roar of its powerful engines, yet the thin cotton-linning cover was as essential as the framework, engines, or gas bags. It kept at bay water that might corrode the framework, protected the gas bags from the elements, and guided air over the ship in a smooth slipstream so the engine's full power could propel R101 forward. To protect the airship, the cloth cover must possess three key properties. First, it must be taut, if it flaps the cover weekends until it fails. Once it has breached disaster strikes, the now unstreamed-line ship bucks in the air, rain and wind punch holes in the gas bags, the airship loses lift and crashes into the ground in an inferno. Second, the cover must be waterproof, otherwise the ship's metal framework could corrode over time. The framework was constructed from stainless steel and iralium in early form of aluminum. Both materials resisted corrosion. For additional protection, the steel was coated with lacquer, and the iralium was anodized, but over years of exposure to water, they could weaken. And third, the cover must be opaque and reflect as much light as possible. This kept the gas bags cool and prevented heating that could cause the bags to expand and burst. No textile displayed all three of these characteristics, so the work's technical staff spent months searching for material to replace the low-tech cloth used on most airships. To create a strong cover, they looked into thin sheets of the same material as the frame, stainless steel and iralium, but each weighed too much. Stainless steel cover weighed 36 tons more than a cloth cover, and a iralium cover exceeded cloth by six tons. They thinned the sheets until they weighed no more than cloth, but the metal then tore. They corrugated the thin sheets to increase strength, but soon realized this was impractical for R101's five and a half acres of cover. The staff evaluated phosphor bronze, metal gauze that blended the properties of metal and cloth, but it snapped when pulled taut. In the end, they settled for the material used by Germany's zeppelins, chemically treated cloth. The cloth used for R101's cover was impregnated with cellulose nitrate known as dope at the works. A predecessor of today's plastics, the dope conferred on the cloth all three of its crucial properties. The weathertight seal, reflectivity, and at least in the past, tautness. On previous airships, workers always laced the cloth cover to the airship's framework and coated it with dope. To apply the dope, workers hung from the shed's rafters and used sprayers. This slow, hazardous task competed the rapid production of airships. Mass manufacturing of fleet of airships, a goal of the Royal Airship Works, was a necessity. The Works team decided on an alternate method. Workers applied a less rigid dope and then attached the cloth to the ship's frame, cranking the cover taut. This mechanically induced tension was reinforced by internal pressure created by circulating air allowed in by vents. Although this new method saved time, it weakened the cloth, as proved by Michael Rope's tests. Cranking on the rigid, pre-coated fabric cost thousands of small cracks that let water seep into the weft. The rains in October and November and the humid air on the shed soaked our 101's cover, which absorbed three tons of water. This rotted the fabric until, as Rope noted, there was no margin of safety. This was a damning indictment from Rope who had, according to a colleague, the best mathematical brain amongst the staff at the Works. Another said he was an outstanding and practical design genius. Rope applied his superb technical skills to carry out the sometimes unorthodox ideas of Richmond, the ship's chief designer. Richmond had little airship design experience and no engineering training, so he relied on Rope to put his ideas into practice. For example, when Richmond's design called for a hydraulic system to control the ship's rudders and elevators, Rope dutifully installed it but designed solid control linkages to eliminate posts, cables and pulleys throughout the ship. It worked so well that the ship responded to the lightest touch with the hydraulics turned off. Or when Richmond's design for R101's framework deviated from established zeppelin principles and eliminated the structures that restrained the gas bags, Rope devised a clever wire netting to keep the gas bags in place. Richmond, a good manager and picker of people, embraced Rope's help. He's got two loves, Richmond joked. R101 and Doreen, Rope's wife, four months pregnant. But I say it's almost bigamy. Michael's married to R101 already. Although Richmond celebrated Rope's acumen, the engineer's natural reserve and honesty prevented his opinions from reaching beyond Richmond. Rope was so modest in retiring, said a colleague, that he tended to efface himself and to discount the credit, which was really his due. Few realized how gifted and valuable he really was. In his memo warning of no margin of safety, Rope asked Richmond to consider whether the risk involved and sending R101 on a long overseas flight is or is not greater than is justified by the need to fulfill public expectations. And he ended his memo with a most stunning suggestion. Is it not conceivable, he wrote, that a public statement could be made, which would satisfy the people who matter to the effect that overseas flights have been postponed for, say, six months on account of improvements which have been undertaken with the reliability required of convincing demonstrations. By people who matter, Rope was alluding to R101's patron, Lord Thompson. At around the time that Michael Rope was writing his memo outlining the deficiencies of R101's cover, the grand eloquent Lord Thompson hurried across the Tudor Rose that graced the floor of the pier's lobby, eager to promote the airship in the House of Lords. When the Air Minister entered the chamber, a pier rose from his crimson leather bench and asked, does civil aviation pay? He continued, how much is it going to benefit the empire as a whole? What is civil aviation worth to the empire? What is it worth to the political life of the empire? Lord Thompson rose to defend his government's aviation program and its flagship R101. Civil aviation, he said, is a fertile field and needs constant weeding because of its fertility. Airships, he said, would link up our empire in a way that, so far as I can see, no other means of transport can approach. I am aware that there has been a great deal of disappointment in regard to the airship program. Thompson's stunt with the MP's flight had fueled that disappointment. It led members to think, he said, that R101 was ready to take 100 MPs all over the country. Thompson now called the proposed flight the greatest error of all my life, although he refused to admit that weather caused the flight's cancellation. It was not because he had told the chamber earlier of the weather condition and the least from the point of view of safety of the airship that we postponed the MP's flight. He claimed R101 could have easily flown that day, but that the cloudy day would have made for poor entertainment. Members would have seen only a sea of cloud below them or nothing but driving rain. The canceled flight, though, epitomized the slow development of British airships. The airship program had started in 1924, and ships were to be flying by 1927, but none did so until 1929. In front of his peers, Thompson cast the delays in building R101 and its postponed flight to India as blips on the path to a fleet of Imperial airships. In spite of many setbacks, he said, in some disappointments, my faith is absolutely undimmed, and I'm sure the people of this country will be right in continuing these experiments. Many members wondered why British airships were still experimental, while Germany's Graf Zeppelin soared around the world. As Thompson spoke, the Graf Zeppelin flew over the Azores at 80 miles per hour on its way to a triumphant return to Germany from a 23-day, 13,400 nautical mile Pan-American tour. How puny seemed R101's 73 hours of flight compared to the Graf Zeppelin's voyages. Its approach to Lisbon marked its eighth ocean crossing and 100,000th mile of travel. The Graf Zeppelin would continue on to Germany, stay for a few days, and then start its summer European tour to Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and gallingly Scotland, Ireland, and England. These Rowan tours astonished the peers. They remembered well the terrors of wartime Zeppelin raids and recalled the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles to dismantle the Zeppelin Company. The treaty mandated the destruction or surrender of all German airships, the demolition of hangars, hydrogen gas plants, and airship factories. As their first act under the treaty, the principal Allied powers, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, seized all Zeppelin Company airships and moved them to their countries. With no airships to sell and no lucrative military contracts, the Zeppelin Company neared bankruptcy. Undeterred, Hugo Eckner, the force behind Zeppelin, ordered his workers to use wartime surplus parts to build two small passenger airships. Once they were built, the Allies confiscated them. One airship was sent to France, the other to Italy. But Eckner fought back. To combat the mandates of the Treaty of Versailles, Eckner cut a deal with the American military. The Zeppelin Company would build an airship for the U.S. as reparations. America now had a stake in keeping the Zeppelin factories intact. U.S. influence helped persuade the Allies to leave Zeppelin facilities untouched and to lift the treaty's restrictions on German airship construction. With the threat of extinction lifted, Eckner in the mid-1920s dreamed of creating a transatlantic airship, the Graf Zeppelin, but after seven years of depression, he said, the Zeppelin Company is at the end of its tether. Eckner approached the Weimar government for funding, but they refused to support his dream. The cash-strap government had just conquered hyperinflation, returned Germany to the gold standard and secured their first international loan. They worried that a Zeppelin in the sky would evoke memories of bombing raids and offend Germany's hard-won international partners. I've got just one solution left, said Eckner. That's to take our problems to the German people. To him, Zeppelin brand airships were an eminent national and cultural achievement and a national treasure of the German nation. To raise money through donations to build the Graf Zeppelin, he formed the Zeppelin-Eckner Fund of the German people. To drum up support, he and other senior Zeppelin executives tirelessly traveled across Germany. They attended lunches and teas during the day. In the evenings, they addressed civic organizations, clubs, and formal dinners. They brought with them Zeppelin kitsch, campaign buttons, postage stamps, pictures, and postcards. On the postcards, they printed appeals to German patriotism. No genuine German, read one, will fail to contribute to save the Lucif Bau Zeppelin, no matter how small his gift. Everyone must give something so that the unity of our entire nation may be seen to hover in the skies above us. Be sure to give, immediately. Eckner urged the German people to sustain its spiritual and technological strength lest it lose confidence in itself and its future. The Fund raised two and a half million marks, far short of the seven million needed to build the Graf Zeppelin. The Weimar government eventually contributed a million marks, but the rest came from the Zeppelin Company. After the First World War, they had retooled their factories and facilities to manufacture consumer goods, engine crankcases for automobile manufacturer Opel, heavy engines for railcars, and aluminum containers for gas, milk, and beer. Their hydrogen plants synthesized industrial gases. The factory that wove the cloth for the Zeppelin's outer cover created consumer textiles, and they leased one of their giant airship hangers to a movie studio. All of these facilities could be used again for Zeppelins. From donations, government funds, and contract work, the Zeppelin Company cobbled together enough funding to create a single airship, the Graf Zeppelin, although the company continued to manufacture consumer goods. The partial return of the Zeppelin Company to building airships and the Graf Zeppelin's freewheeling around the globe cast doubts on the competence of the Royal Airship Works and on the soundness of R101's design. In his speech to the House of Lords, he addressed the matter of the German success. You may well ask why it is that the Graf Zeppelin can go round the world and make enormous flights while our two ships spend their time mainly in their sheds. This is a very easy question to answer. The Germans have 30 years' experience of building airships. They ran commercial ships from Lake Constance before the war. I do not wish to decry the virtues of our own people, but in view of that experience I think it is only natural that we should accept the fact that there are very few Dr. Ekeners, the great intellectual force behind Zeppelins in this world. We have not had time to produce our Dr. Ekener, one of the most remarkable men I have ever met. They are not found in every generation. Zealous, though, for the British approach to airships, Thompson defended R101's design. We have started out on the design of these two ships, R100 and R101, on the basis of first principles. We have not copied any well-known model, but we have produced two ships that are the strongest in the world. He proclaimed them almost unbreakable. Thompson declared R101 and R100 capable of flying in any foreseeable weather provided they are properly navigated. Yet, as he spoke, the cover of R101 rotted in its shed to the point, in Michael Rope's words, that it had no margin of safety for flight in a rough atmosphere. Unwilling to back down from his vision of airships as the standard bearers of British aviation, Thompson asked the peers to proceed forthwith with approval for the construction of a 7.5 million cubic foot ship, a third larger than R101. He characterized this proposed ship in a telling phrase as a commercial proposition, a phrase inappropriate for the overweight R101. And he closed his speech with praise for R101. It combines speed, safety, and indeed amenities, because to travel in an airship is by far the most delightful form of travel that I personally have ever experienced. Yet, as Thompson spoke, these amenities were being stripped from R101. At the Royal Airship Works, 50 miles north of London, workers executed the first stage of R101's two-stage refit to gain lift. They treated the airship like a critically ill patient as ordered by the work's technical staff. They triaged three tons from R101. They lopped off more than a half ton of girder shown by the test flights to be unnecessary for supporting the cloth cover. They stripped the 400-pound hydraulic power steering for the rudders and fins, redundant because of rope's clever linkages. They replaced the wavy triplex windows of the promenade decks with selen windows and swapped the cast aluminum cylinder covers on the engines with sheet metal ones. They axed now useless fuel tanks. R101's capacity for fuel far exceeded the amount it could lift to a pair of 1,000 pounds. They demolished 12 of the 52 double-birth compartments and barricaded the empty space. And because R101 would for now all know paying passengers, only enthusiastic guests, they removed amenities. No longer was hot water piped to the rooms. Supplies of hot water, reported the technical staff, could be obtained at Lou from the galley. This simple change cut 630 pounds from the ship. They snipped 350 pounds from the ventilation and heating systems of the passenger cabins. For the flight to India, they reasoned, any question of passenger car heating should be abolished. They removed two passenger bathrooms to shed 130 pounds and stripped the kitchen of its vegetable steamer and hot cupboard. Desperate to shave every bit of weight possible, they whittled 30 pounds by dismantling the engine telegraph in the room above the control car. And they even trimmed 3 pounds by building the bow voice pipe into the passengers' handrail along the ship's corridor. To gain three more tons of lift, they enlarged each gas bag by 3 or 4 inches by letting out the netting designed by Michael Rope to keep the gas bags in place. These changes increased R101's lift by 5 tons, enough to add 650 nautical miles of range when cruising at 55 miles per hour. Not enough to cross the Arabian desert when flying from Egypt to India. To cross the desert required lift gained in the second stage of the refit which would add 1,500 or so miles to the range. To test R101's changes, Major Scott scheduled a flight to the Hinden airfield in North London where the airship would, he hoped, stun audiences at the upcoming RAF display an annual airshow that showcased Britain's aviation prowess. A few days beforehand at 3.30 a.m. on June 23, 20 days after Thompson had told his colleagues in the House of Lords that R101 could fly in any foreseeable weather, Scott, megaphone and hand barked orders to a few hundred men as they walked the greatly modified ship from the shed to the mooring tower. Exiting the shed without incident was the last thing that would go well that day. Soon after the ship was attached to the tower's arm, the wind picked up. The cover rippled from bow to stern. As the wind increased, ripples from the ship's bow collided with those originating aft. A crew member watched the violent action and thought, no cover can stand that sort of treatment for long. He was correct. A 140-foot long tear opened along the top of the ship. The next day newspapers followed the Air Ministry press guidance. Slight damage to the fabric near the top of the airship was noticed yesterday afternoon, but it was learned that it was nothing to worry about. The work's nimble and efficient rigors scrambled across the ship's cover and glued shut the split with strips of cloth, like a bandage over a wound, to allow R101's star turn at the RAF display to go ahead later that month. But every one of the works knew that the cloth cover's failure imperiled its demonstration flight to India in October.