Lighter Than Air

by Guy Warner

  Delta experienced both misfortune and success. On a test flight, she broke down near Faversham in Kent and was forced to land. Wireless messages of distress were sent out, the aerials being fixed to a neighbouring tree, and in response Commander C.R. Samson, RN, and Captain G.V. Wildman-Lushington, RMA, flew over in Short biplanes from the Naval Flying School at Eastchurch to render assistance. Having been repaired and now piloted by Clive Waterlow, Delta next left Farnborough early in the morning and travelled to the Isle of Sheppey before the wind rose. There, several naval pilots turned up and flew round her ‘joyously’. Leaving Sheerness about 11 am, she reached London about midday, assisted by a strong breeze from the south-east, and passed over St Paul’s and St James’s Park. She crossed the Royal Aero Club building with about 50 feet (15 metres) to spare and went up Bond Street, the pilot showing her to be under excellent control. Finally, she reached Farnborough safely, having beaten the Eta’s record as she had been in the air about eight and a half hours.243

  The Astra-Torres, HMA No 3, emerged again on 8 September, after some months out of commission for necessary alterations. Its first half hour flight was again in the hands of M Hugon, M Rousell and a French crew, with Usborne, Commander Oliver Schwann and Commander Masterman as passengers. It performed satisfactorily, was formally accepted by the RN and soon began a successful trials programme. This included a six hour flight around Portsmouth, the Isle of Wight, Bournemouth and Portland. She also established a record speed for a British airship of 51mph (82kph) during the course of a one hour flight, with Captain Sueter and Lieutenant L’Estrange Malone as passengers. Usborne was appointed to command in October, with Lieutenant W.C. Hicks as his flying officer,244 and later wrote:

  ‘The Astra-Torres was of a tri-lobe form, and allowed an internal system of rigging that distributed the load fore and aft the length of the envelope. This Astra-Torres patent for suspension was a good system and the envelopes on the whole kept their shape well.’245

  HMA No 3, Astra-Torres, is secured at a portable mooring mast at Farnborough in the spring of 1914. (Ces Mowthorpe Collection)

  A newspaper report a few days later stated:

  ‘The naval airship Astra-Torres, navigated by Lieutenant N.F. Usborne, RN, and a crew of seamen, made an evening flight yesterday. A heavy fog obscured her from view almost from the first moment of her ascent. The aircraft returned after dark and was lighted to her landing by a row of lamps, while a semi-circle of electric lights indicated the door of her shed. Earlier in the day the naval craft was flying with the Eta and displayed a faster turn of speed than the army dirigible balloon.’246

  On the twenty-fourth of the month he took Winston Churchill for a flight, of which The Times wrote:

  ‘In the meantime the Astra-Torres naval airship had arrived at the Isle of Grain from Farnborough, descending on the marshes near the air station at half past twelve. While at the aeroplane station, the ship took Mr Churchill and Sir Ian Hamilton on board, and, under the command of Lieutenant Usborne, RN, made a circuitous flight lasting an hour and a half. After landing her passengers the airship, leaving at 4.20, returned to Farnborough Common, where she arrived at 5.45. On the homeward and outward journey the ship carried, besides Lieutenant Usborne and his crew of sailors, Commander Masterman, RN, Engineer Lieutenant Cave-Browne-Cave, RN, and Lieutenant Hicks, RN.’247

  The distinguished passenger enjoyed the flight and availed himself of the opportunity, not long afterwards, to fly in both Beta and Delta. He later wrote of the Astra-Torres:

  ‘I went in her for a beautiful cruise at about 1000 feet around Chatham and the Medway. She is a very satisfactory vessel and I was allowed to steer her for an hour. She was very easy to steer.’248

  Mr Churchill had arrived at the Isle of Grain from Eastchurch for his flight with Usborne in the Short Biplane No 3, flown by Commander C.R. Samson, RN, having been conveyed there in the morning by the Admiralty yacht Enchantress.249 By the end of the year the airship was reported as having made a number of successful flights visiting Portsmouth, Sheerness and Chatham. On 18 October, the intrepid Major Maitland made the world’s first parachute descent from an airship, namely Delta, which was being piloted by Captain Waterlow. He jumped from 1800 feet (548 metres), swaying to and fro in an arc of some 50 feet (15 metres) as he descended under the canopy. The parachute fell into deep water at Cove Reservoir, but Maitland, being just at the end of one of the oscillations, came down in a shallower part. When the jump took place Delta rose sharply with the reduction in payload, but this was swiftly arrested by Waterlow.250

  On another flight in the Astra-Torres, Captain Sueter, who was flying as a passenger, made an unusual request. He asked Usborne to bring along three dozen eggs. As the airship circled over Farnborough, the eggs were dropped at regular intervals from a height of 800 feet (243 metres). It was a perfectly still day and the eggs dropped and penetrated the earth like bullets, without smashing. By this means Sueter was able to ascertain the turning circle of the airship and to judge how responsive it was to the action of the rudder.251

  Also in October 1913, airships became the sole responsibility of Naval Wing. Beta, Gamma, Delta and Eta were handed over by the army to the navy – apparently as the result of an informal discussion between Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty and Colonel Seely, the Secretary of State for War. Major Sefton Brancker, ‘the monocled, deceptively foppish Indian Army officer, whose approachability, drive and enthusiasm belied his image and who was one of the principal motive forces in British aviation for twenty years,’252 who was serving with the Military Wing as the Assistant Director of Military Aeronautics later wrote:

  ‘This was a bombshell! The General Staff were furious, and the Military Aeronautics Directorate threw up their hands to heaven and called down curses on the heads of all politicians. We soldiers loved our little airships and fought hard to retain them; they were small but they led the world in efficient handling and we felt they were the germ of a great future.’253

  Another view of the Astra-Torres, HMA No 3, at Farnborough. (via PS Leaman)

  He added:

  ‘But Seely was absolutely right. In practice at their then state of development, our airships would have been perfectly useless to the army, whereas they proved invaluable to the Admiralty in the Great War.’254

  This division of responsibility had in fact been considered by Seely’s technical sub-committee in 1912, which had recommended the attachment of naval officers to the military wing of the RFC for airship duties (the first of whom was Neville Usborne) to learn the ropes with a view to the naval wing taking the lead in due course.255 The airships, along with their equipment and plant, were valued at £65,000, with the Admiralty agreeing that such an amount should be placed by the Treasury to the credit of the War Office. The officers and men of the former airship squadron of the RFC would henceforth be attached to the naval wing and placed under the command of Commander E.A.D. Masterman, RN, with Neville Usborne as his deputy. He later wrote:

  ‘These small airships were good for training, but they could only make short flights and their engines were none too reliable.’256

  Masterman commented:

  ‘This period was one of the happiest of his life, he was continually active and quite willing to start again at the beginning in the hope of gradually building up a naval airship service.’257

  In the same year, works commenced at Kingsnorth, on the Hoo Peninsula at Medway, not far from Sheerness and Chatham. Two large airship sheds were planned, one made of metal and the other of wood, as well as all the necessary accommodation and services, including hydrogen generating plant, gas tanks, fuel tanks, workshops, wireless station and a light railway, for what would become an important Royal Naval Air Station – the principal airship dockyard, centre of research and development, and major training establishment.258

  On 3 December 1913, Captain Clive Waterlow, AFAeS, RE, read a paper before the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain titled: ‘The Coming Airship’.
This was followed by a lantern show with slides showing the construction, method of working and the control of the airships Gamma, Beta, Eta, Willows, Parseval and Astra-Torres. In his talk he argued that, until relatively recently, there had been a prejudice in the press against airships and that journalists seemed to regard airships in wartime as being at the mercy of any aeroplane. He countered this by saying:

  ‘I don’t think it is generally realised that the airship has by no means reached such an advanced stage of development as the aeroplane; the possibilities and probabilities of the future are very rosy and very wonderful.’259

  He went on to discuss the differences between the lines of airship development in England and on the Continent. In England the focus had been on producing smaller craft with greater handiness and control, in Europe the aim had been to build the largest ships possible with the longest range. Waterlow then described how, on manoeuvres with the army in September 1913, Delta and Eta had coped well in the field with rain and bad weather, needing only a small handling party. He looked forward to a day soon when airships would go as fast as 55 or 60mph (88 to 95kph). He added:

  ‘If ever airships achieve 70mph (112kph) it is difficult to see where the aeroplane, as we know it today, will come in at all for war purposes; and this, of course, applies equally to seaplanes.’260

  Waterlow was underestimating the potential of the aeroplane in this respect, as the world absolute speed record for a fixed-wing aircraft stood at 111mph (179kph) in 1913 – though it should be noted that the aircraft was unencumbered by any warlike stores or other useful load.

  On the question of safety he saw fire as the greatest hazard – from the engines, the wireless apparatus, or other sources, ‘such as defective wiring in the electric lighting circuit, matches and so on’.261 The combustible material which could be set alight he identified as, ‘the gas within the envelope, the petrol for the motors, and such portions of the car and framework as are not made of metal’. He believed that the risk of fire from the engine could be rendered small by guards on the carburettor and the exhaust pipes, as well as silencers which also acted to cool down exhaust gases; rogue sparks from the wireless could be eliminated by careful design, and risk from other sources could be dealt with by good safety procedures. As regards the combustible materials, hydrogen was the only suitable gas available and it was essential to allow some means for it to be vented when required. He looked to the development of a satisfactory automatic valve placed on the top of the envelope, and encouraged chemists to seek a light non-inflammable gas which could be mixed with hydrogen and make it inert, but not materially impair its lift. In 1903, large reserves of the light and inert gas – helium – were found in the natural gas fields of the USA. The world’s first helium-filled airship, the US Navy’s C-7, first flew on 1 December 1921.

  Petrol was also necessary, though he hoped that it could eventually be replaced by heavy oils. In the meantime it should be carried on board aft of the engine and as far away from it as possible. As regards non-metal items, they should be fireproofed. He regarded the greatest danger to a non-rigid airship being a propeller blade breaking off and slicing into the envelope. To counteract this he recommended that the envelope should be divided internally with partitions to minimise the damage caused by a foreign body of any sort making a hole in the envelope. He then moved on to examine design; firstly the envelope, which was usually made of a fabric of cotton and rubber, dyed yellow. Other possibilities were goldbeater’s skin or silk. The main aim was to produce an outer skin which could be easily manufactured, would hold gas well, would not deteriorate and would absorb no moisture. Next, he emphasised the desirability of internal partitions and noted that the latest Zeppelin had seventeen separate gas containers. As regards armament, he recommended a gun should be mounted on top of the envelope. Concerning the powerplant, he thought a six cylinder engine (or engines depending upon the size of the airship) driving a four-bladed propeller would be sufficient. Swivelling propellers were very useful in assisting smooth landings at all weights. The control system should be easily within the reach and view of the pilot, or in a larger airship there should be a telegraph instrument. Finally, he considered the use of the airship in military and commercial roles. He recommended for military use a non-rigid type slightly bigger than the Astra-Torres airship HMA No 3, with a speed of 55mph (88kph), a crew of eight or nine, nine hours endurance and two guns mounted in the car and on the top of the envelope, ‘both designed to shoot all around the compass.’262 He saw a great future ahead for the civil airship and wondered why a service from London to Paris was not already in being. Newspaper and mail delivery from the air to rural areas, dropped by parachute to village shops, was also seen as a promising way ahead. Aerial yachts for the rich were also predicted. In conclusion, he described an imaginary voyage from London to Paris in the airship Albatross. The first of the audience to rise and discuss Waterlow’s paper was Neville Usborne. His main point was that he considered the speaker to have been overly pessimistic with regard to the future potential top speed of airships. He thought that the prospects for an airship attaining a speed of 70mph (112kph) in the near future were excellent and went on to say:

  ‘High speed would enable an airship to face any gale and be largely independent of weather conditions, which are always a factor in aerial navigation.’263

  [Author’s note: On 27 October 2004, the American adventurer, the late Steve Fossett, and his co-pilot Hans-Paul Stroehle, in the Zeppelin NT, set an officially verified speed world record for airships over a 1000 metre course of 115kph (71mph). This is below the maximum performances of Zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg and LZ130 Graf Zeppelin II, which attained more than 130kph (80.5mph), and the American airship ZRS-5 Macon, which reached 140.3kph (87mph). However, these speeds were never verified by the official body responsible for keeping these records, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. [www.records.fai.org]

  Others who spoke after Neville Usborne included the man-lifting kite pioneer, Major B.F.S. Baden-Powell, E.T. Willows, the airship manufacturer, Mervyn O’Gorman, the superintendent of His Majesty’s Aircraft Factory at Farnborough and F.M. Green, the factory’s design engineer, who were all generally in agreement with the points made by Waterlow. It was noted that the meeting concluded with a vote of thanks to Captain Waterlow for his excellent paper.264

  In January 1914, as had been agreed, the Admiralty took over the airships, work plans and aerodrome at Farnborough from the Military Wing. The airship branch at this time consisted of six officers, thirty-eight men and civilian repair staff under the command of Commander Masterman, RN. Naval and military seniorities were adjusted to a common list, which was a very delicate matter. It is appropriate at this point to consider the rank structure in the RN air branch at this time:

  Wing Captain = Captain RN

  Wing Commander = Commander RN

  Squadron Commander (in command) = Lieutenant Commander RN

  Squadron Commander (not in command) = Lieutenant RN of over four years seniority (but senior to all Flight Commanders)

  Flight Commander = Lieutenant RN of over four years seniority

  Flight Lieutenant = Lieutenant RN

  Flight Sub-Lieutenant = Sub-Lieutenant

  Warrant Officer 1st Grade = Commissioned Warrant Officer RN

  Warrant Officer 2nd Grade = Warrant Officer RN265

  The flying rank was not necessarily the career officer’s substantive rank. As an example, a Lieutenant RN could be appointed to flying duties as a Flight Lieutenant, Flight Commander, Squadron Commander, or even Wing Commander. If and when an officer reverted to general service, he could find himself back as a Lieutenant. Ranks in the RNAS were denoted by stars over the sleeve lace (for Flight Lieutenants and Squadron Commanders) and three stripes in the sleeve lacing for Wing Commanders. All pilots wore the RNAS eagle badge above the loop of their left sleeve lace. For an officer transferring in the airship service as it moved from the Royal Engineers to the RFC, RNAS and fi
nally the RAF, the position could become even more complicated, particularly when rapid wartime promotion, temporary and brevet ranks were factored in. For example, E.M. Maitland was a Lieutenant in the Essex Regiment when he was attached to the Balloon School in 1910; by the following year he was a captain in the Air Battalion, Royal Engineers. Within a few months he was a major in the Royal Flying Corps and, at the commencement of the First World War, he was promoted not only to lieutenant colonel, but also wing commander in the RNAS, rising to colonel in the RFC and wing captain in the RNAS. In 1918 he became a brigadier general in the RAF and, when the rank structure for the new service was agreed in 1919, he was firstly a permanent commission as a group captain and then promoted to air commodore. Maitland therefore served as an officer in the infantry, RFC, RNAS and RAF.

  Masterman wrote:

  ‘Usborne’s position in the airship world rose through this move. From being almost a guest of the RFC at Farnborough, he was now a person of importance in the combined service, and his capabilities and knowledge were fully recognised by his former hosts.’266

  Usborne was promoted to commander RN – a substantive, not an ‘air duties’ rank – on 1 January 1914267 and the following notice appeared in Flight Magazine of 28 February 1914: