Zeppelin Mania: R-34 Day 3

R-34 in Flight

July 4 (a Friday in 1919) brought with it a beautifully wonderful sunrise and a very welcome reprieve from the rough winds of the night’s stormy weather.

The fog still obscured a view of the sea, although the occasional break did occur which revealed bluish-green patches of water and large number of icebergs.

General Maitland remarked that the airship liner of the future will be immune from the risk of hitting one of those floating ice mountains. It must be remembered, a mere seven years earlier, the Titanic had struck one and sunk with a terrible loss of life.

Shortly before 1 PM a celebration broke out in the control car. From the log book:

Land in sight. Hooray! First spotted by Scott on starboard bow. A few small rocky islands visible for a second or two through the clouds and instantly swallowed up by them. Altered course S.W. to try and get a closer look at them. Eventually make them out to be north coastline of Newfoundland. This is quite the most thrilling moment of our voyage — great excitement on board. Whether or not we now succeed in getting through to New York, we have at any rate successfully accomplished the first stage of our adventure, and are the first to bridge the gulf from east to west by way of the air.

However, not all was bliss. Mineola Field on Long Island was still many miles away and the airship’s progress was reduced to a crawl due to strong head winds. And to make matters worse, the R-34 was running out of fuel.

More to come, so stay tuned!

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Zeppelin Mania: R-34 Day 2

R-34 in Flight

July 3rd, Morning. Over halfway to Newfoundland. Beyond wireless range. Southeasterly wind picking up.

Midday. Lunch of cold roast beef and only one cold potato for each crew member. General Maitland lamented, “We are short of potatoes, having eaten too many yesterday!” However, there are plenty of provisions still onboard: bread, butter, cheese, chocolate, and tea. And thank God for the tea!

One of the assessments the General had to make was that of the airship’s potential for future long-distance flights and to suggest improvements. Food is an important relief to the monotony of a long flight, especially when all there is to see are clouds. Future airships will definitely need cooking facilities.

Afternoon. The southeasterly wind has grown stronger. The sea has become very rough. Heavy rain is falling.

Evening. The thick fog is making life on the airship unpleasantly cold. There is an air of anxiety amongst the crew. To make matters worse, fierce squalls are causing the ship to pitch up and down. A log entry reads:

The rain is driving through the roof of the fore car in many places, and there is a thin film of water over the chart table. The wind is roaring to such an extent that we have to shout to make ourselves heard. Time for evening meal, but no one gives it a thought while this entertainment is going on.

What a miserable night for the crew of the R-34; but the ship motors on, heading for America.

More to come! Stay tuned!

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Zeppelin Mania: LZ-1 and R-34

LZ-1 Aloft

The LZ-1 in Flight Over the Bodensee

One hundred sixteen years ago today, at 8:03 in the evening, the LZ-1 slowly floated upward from the surface of the Bodensee and made history. The first successful rigid airship had taken flight, realizing the dream of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. For 17 minutes, the Count and four others flew over the lake; until engine trouble and the jamming of the pitch control device forced the airship to land.

The flight was an inauspicious beginning to the dream that has fueled the imagination of men and women ever since. For who hasn’t wished he or she could float in the air just like a cloud and at the same time have the ability to go not only where the wind wishes but to also go where the wind does not wish. For 116 years lighter than air travel has captured our imagination as the airplane never did. The luxury of the Hindenburg has never been equaled by any aircraft before or since.

But today is not only the anniversary of the first flight of the first zeppelin, it is also the anniversary of the realization of the dream of intercontinental flight. In 1919 airplanes first flew across the Atlantic from west to east. However they could not do so in one hop, they had to stop and refuel in the Azores. Or are they made the short flight from Newfoundland to Ireland. Also airplanes did not have enough power to make the east to west flight across the Atlantic against the prevailing winds.

That all changed at 1:42 AM on the morning of 2 July 1919 when the British airship R-34 lifted off from Scotland; her destination being Roosevelt Field, Long Island, New York. On board were 30 persons. The captain was Major George Herbert Scott, the most skillful British airship pilot. The ship was a near copy of a captured German World War I zeppelin and was a magnificent vessel. Her sleek streamlined hull was 645 feet long and was filled with nearly 2,000,000 cubic feet of hydrogen gas.

R34sidel

She was a military vessel and had no creature comforts. In order to serve the crew hot meals on the flight, a metal plate was welded to one of the engine manifolds and the food cooked on it. Off duty crewmen slept in hammocks suspended between the girders. A somewhat perilous endeavor, for if one had the misfortune to roll out of bed he would find himself plunging through the thin fabric covering and on to the ocean far below.

The senior officer onboard was General Maitland, who was the driving force behind Britain’s airship program. He was a popular officer and had devoted his career to innovative flight of all kinds and he was a great believer in the rigid airship. Just before the R-34 lifted off, Maitland wrote in his logbook, “What more wonderful or more delightful adventure could anyone be called upon to undertake?”

Groping its way over the Scottish hillside in the dark and heavy cloud cover, the R-34 headed west and at 5:25 AM, two hours after the sun had risen behind the ship, the R-34 passed the last island off the north Irish coast. The great adventure had begun.

Twelve hours into the flight, when the airship was well out to sea, Aircraftsman Second Class William W Ballantyne revealed himself. He had been cut at the last minute to save weight, but was so eager to make the trip he stowed away. In the afternoon another stowaway was discovered onboard, Wopsie the cat. Ballantyne’s action very nearly jeopardized the voyage. Weight is critical on an airship. His 200 extra pounds deprived the ship from carrying that weight in fuel, which as it turned out nearly caused the voyage to end in failure.

When the airship had just gotten underway, General Maitland described the experience as follows:

When flying at night, possibly on account of the darkness, there is always the feeling of utter loneliness directly one loses sight of the ground. We feel this loneliness very much tonight; possibly owing to the fact that we are bound for a totally unknown destination across the wide Atlantic.

But the necessity of work soon dispelled any feelings of loneliness. The airship required careful flying because of the darkness and the heavy cloud cover, which, when the sun rose, became a heavy fog.

Lunch on board the airship was beef stew, potatoes, chocolate, and water. Not five star, but a hot meal is always welcomed.

In the evening, as the temperatures fell, Major Scott increased the height of the airship to 2000 feet. For a time, the R-34 flew through a heavy cloud bank and the crew found themselves in a dream-like enchanted setting over the ocean. One person recorded it this way, “We feel in a world of our own up here amidst this dazzling array of snow-white clouds. No words can express the wonder, the grandeur, or the loneliness of it all…”

And thus the R-34 flew on into the night, heading for America.

Tomorrow, we continue the adventure. Stay tuned!

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Zeppelin Mania

This past Tuesday I wrote about the flight of the world’s first airliner — the LZ-7 Deutschland.

That post was a prelude to a series I’ll be writing throughout the rest of the year chronicling the triumphs of the rigid airship. More commonly known as the zeppelin, after Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin who built the first successful rigid airship.

Airship Types

There are three types of airship. Here is a diagram:

airshipstype

 

The earliest type was non-rigid, what we call a blimp today. There is no framework to maintain the shape of the envelope. The shape is maintained by gas pressure.

140501-N-PO203-446

The second type of airship is the semi-rigid, like the new Zeppelin NT. The semi-rigid has a frame to maintains the length. Gas pressure maintains the width.

Norge_airship_in_flight_1926

The famous Norge which crossed the North Pole in 1926.

The third type is the rigid airship. The shape of the envelope is held in place by a framework. The lift gas is contained in bags (called cells) within the framework.

LosAngeles_Panama_1929_1

The ZR-3 USS Los Angeles

Why The Rigid Airship Is Better

The problem with non-rigid and semi-rigid airships is that they cannot be built large enough to be commercially viable. Blimps proved of value in anti-submarine warfare in World War II, but they and semi-rigids can’t carry sufficient cargo to be of large scale commercial use. The new semi-rigid Zeppelin NTs are basically used for advertising and sightseeing excursions.

The rigid airship solves the problem. The frame provides shape and strength and can be scaled up as large as the vessel needs to be. The rigid airship made the dream of long-range strategic bombing and intercontinental flight a reality.

Tomorrow is a double anniversary: the first flight of the first zeppelin and the start of the first east-west crossing of the Atlantic by air and the first round trip trans-Atlantic flight by an aircraft. An auspicious day indeed!

So get a glass of bubbly ready. Tomorrow we party!

Comments are always welcome. Until next time, happy reading!

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