Zeppelin Mania: R34’s Flight Home Day 1

R34 flying just above a depression copy

R 34 Flying Just Above Dense Clouds On The Outskirts of a Depression.
This illustration shows a typical cloud horizon.
(From General Maitland’s published logbook.)

All good things must come to an end, so it is said. For 3 days the crew of the R34 have partied hearty. However, bad weather was on the horizon and Major Scott makes the decision to take off and head for home before the forecast storm hits.

From General Maitland’s log:

Time 11.30 p.m. (New York summer time)—It is very dark, and the wind is gusting up to thirty miles per hour on the ground.

Our final preparations are made in the ghostly light of powerful searchlights.

We have made hosts of friends during our three wonderful days in America, and they are all here on the ground to see us off.

11.40 p.m.—Last farewells. Crew are all aboard and Scott releases ballast to ensure the ship being light when starting. At the last moment another bag of mails and a case of rum are thrown in through the open window of the forward car.

11.54 p.m. (July 9th, New York summer time, or 3.54 a.m., July 10th, Greenwich mean time).—Away.

A great cheer comes up to us as we rise into the sky and steer straight for New York…

Again that strange feeling of loneliness—as sudden as it is transient.

And the R34 is away! Motoring into the night sky on her way from Long Island to the heart of the Big Apple.

[Note:—While in the midst of last minute research, I made the most wonderful discovery: The Log of H.M.A. R34: Journey to America and Back by Air-Commodore E.M. Maitland.

What an exciting find! The book is available online and in ebook form at https://archive.org/details/logofhmajourney00maitrich

General Maitland, with wit, humor, and an eye to the poetic, gives us a most extraordinary travelogue. This book is his actual log that he kept almost minute by minute on the R34’s voyage to America and back. The publishing of he log in 1920 is made all the more important by the fact General Maitland died in the R38 tragedy the following year. His death was a huge blow to the British rigid airship program.

For me, having relied on a host of secondary sources for my accounting of the voyage, the discovery of his log emphasized the importance of primary sources in research. For according to General Maitland, the rough journey depicted in the secondary sources of the flight to America simply wasn’t the case. There were only a couple episodes of violent movement, according to Maitland. At all other times the ship’s movements were slow and deliberate. Nothing like a storm-tossed ship on the sea. He makes numerous comments of never feeling “seasick” or more appropriately, as he noted, “airsick”.

However, not being able to find the source of the “rough” journey stories, I must consider the political aspects. General Maitland was a dyed in the wool airshipman. He wrote numerous times of the future airliners and what the R34’s flight demonstrated was needed in them. His job was to make an assessment of the feasibility of long-distance airship travel. Could it be the General “softened” his account of the actual conditions? Possible. After all, he needed to convince the Air Ministry bureaucrats that airliners were not only possible but desirable.

So where did my secondary sources get their “rough” journey information? Perhaps newspaper accounts drawn from the crew members, who may have exaggerated the dangers to make themselves look even more heroic and to please the journalists looking for a hot story.

Whatever the case, and hopefully I can find out by the time of the R34’s centenary in 2019, do read the log. It is an exciting and extraordinary travelogue. An adventure back in time as well as to a fantasy land that exists above the clouds.]

There is more to come as the R34 makes her way home to Britain. So stay tuned for tomorrow’s adventure!

R34 moored out at Mineola copy

R 34 moored out at Mineola. Viewed by searchlight.
(From the published logbook of General Maitland.)

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Zeppelin Mania: R-34 Day 5

LandingOfBritishDirigibleR-341919-1

The Landing of the R-34 in America

 

Before dawn on Sunday, with the fuel situation desperate, Major Scott, the R-34’s captain, radioed the US Navy: “Will land Montauk.”

Shortly after 4 AM, the crew of the airship spotted the distinctive outline of Cape Cod and at long last the rough weather began to abate and a following wind increased the ship’s ground speed.

Chief Engineer, Second Lieutenant J D Shotter, organized a foraging party to drain every last drop of fuel from the ship’s 80 fuel tanks. Armed with pots and pans and jars, the party drained the tanks until they were bone dry and poured the fuel directly into the gravity-fed tanks above the engines.

At 7:20 in the morning, the airship appeared over Montauk. With only 90 miles to go, Scott decided to press on to Roosevelt Field in Mineola — the R-34’s original destination. And make it, she did. Thanks to Lieutenant Schotter’s foraging party. In fact, enough fuel had been collected to enable the giant airship to fly for another two hours at full speed.

When the R-34 appeared over Roosevelt Field, on the ground was a huge crowd of spectators and 500 military police to control them and 1000 men from the US Navy’s Air Service. However, a rigid airship had never been to America before and there was no experienced officer to direct the landing. The British team that was supposed to be on hand had gone to Boston when it was thought the airship would make a fuel stop in Massachusetts.

The decision was made for Major J E M Prichard to parachute to the ground and direct the landing operation. He landed heavily and in doing so became the first person to arrive in America by air. He was instantly mobbed by reporters, one of whom asked, “Can you tell us what your first impressions of America are, sir?” Prichard responded, “Hard.” He then rode off on a motorbike to direct the landing of the airship.

When the R-34 finally came down at 9:54 AM that Sunday morning, the 6th of July 1919, she’d been in the air 108 hours and 12 minutes — setting a new endurance record. General Maitland recorded, “We couldn’t have cut it much finer.”

R34 Mineola

The R-34 in Mineola, NY

 

The R-34 was the first aircraft to make the difficult east-west crossing of the Atlantic. Just a few weeks earlier, Alcock and Brown, in a Vickers Vimy, had made the west-east flight. But clearly in 1919 the way of the future was the airship. Alcock and Brown flew in an open cockpit, at times upside down, had flown a shorter distance, and ended up nose first in an Irish bog.

The R-34 carried 31 men in relative comfort, flown through weather no airplane could, and had arrived at their destination intact. And at the time had made the crossing no airplane could — flying from Europe to America. It wasn’t until 1938 that a specially modified version of the Focke-Wulf Condor made the first non-stop flight from Berlin to New York City. Airships had been making regular non-stop flights for years by then.

In my research, I came across this wonderful site — Vanderbilt Cup Races — which has loads of pictures and video of the R-34. Do take a look. It’s fabulous.

The second video is labeled an unknown field; however, I’d guess it was the R-34’s homecoming since the ground crew was walking her into her shed.

Today, when air travel is taken for granted, it’s difficult to imagine the euphoria created by the flight of the R-34. True, it was an airplane that made the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic — but that flight did nothing to inspire dreams of air travel, the air travel we all now take for granted. It was the flight of the R-34 that fueled the dream of the possible that eventually became reality.

Stay tuned! There’s more to come! After all, the R-34 has to now fly home. Until next time, keep your eyes to the sky! The zeppelins are coming!

R-34 mural

Peppino Mangravite mural of R-34’s landing.
Located in the US Post Office in Hempstead, NY.

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