by Nevil Shute
Immediately afterwards the starboard and aft cars rang for assistance and pointed out tears in the fins.
The fins of R.100 were not visible from the control car, but could be seen from the engine cars.
I went aft with Meager and Wann; speed was reduced. In the lower fin two tapes had torn away making 3 ft slits. I left Wann to watch these and went on after Meager to the starboard fin. Here there was a large hole on the backbone girder, lower surface, near 14. Meager went down to get help, and I went out along 14 finpost in to the backbone and managed to pull the loose, beating fabric inboard and stop the spread till riggers came with Meager and relieved me.
Captain G. F. Meager was the first officer of the ship, and a great friend.
Meager asked me to go and have a look at the port fin while he went to the top fin. I went by way of Frame 15, and found a hole large enough to drive a bus through, in the lower surface, centred on 13a. It extended from the radius to the backbone, and about fifteen feet long. The tapes were sound but the fabric was hanging in rags, and the whole was beating badly.
The fins were formed on girders which stuck through the ship in a cruciform manner. The outer ends of these girders were connected with a backbone girder, which formed the outer longitudinal edge of the fin. On this structure a system of wires was stretched. The fabric cover was then laid on the fin and tightened down to this wiring system by means of cord lashings.
Throughout the ship the panels of the outer cover were reinforced with T tapes sewn to the fabric, the tapes running in lines three feet apart. These tapes carried eyelets every foot of their length, by which the cover was lashed to the wiring system. What had happened now was that the outer cover fabric had blown off the tapes. The radius referred to was where the fin cover joined the hull cover at the base of the fin. The hole measured about 15 ft by 12 ft.
Went down to the keel and found Meager and Moncrieff; top fin was O.K. As soon as the starboard and lower fins were sewn and sealed the full staff of riggers came to the port fin, with several engineers. At one time we had fifteen men up there.
The hole was in the lower surface of the fin, which was about four feet thick on the average, tapering to less thickness at the outer edge by the backbone girder. The job therefore required the riggers to climb about on wires like tight-rope walkers, with nothing but the waters of the St. Lawrence a thousand feet below. They wore safety belts, with which they could sometimes hitch themselves on to a wire.
We made good all round (the hole) first; laced upper and lower hull covers to the apex boom of longitudinals D and E, and laced the top and bottom fin covers up to finpost 14 to make a leading edge if the whole of 13a went. Then, by climbing out, managed to ‘furl’ the rags of fabric on the tapes and reduce fluttering. Then passed a rope or two out at the most forward split and in at the aft split, and bowsed inwards, and so tautened the tapes. Finally passed a sheet of cotton, nearly large enough to fill the hole, out at forward slit and managed to tie it to the tapes and so make good the majority of the hole. When finished it didn’t flap much at 45 knots. After 2 hours standing still just stemming the wind we were able to get ahead a bit, and make good about 20 knots over ground.
The sheet of cotton fabric was carried on board for just such an emergency; it was already provided with tapes and eyelets round the edge and all over it. It was, in fact, a sort of collision mat. I think we had two of them on board; we had a lot more when we started home for England! I cannot remember why it was of cotton, for the rest of the hull fabric was linen. I think we were cruising at about 20 m.p.h. while all this was going on.
Quebec was reached at about 6 p.m. A smaller town than I should have thought; they were massed on all the promenades and in the parks to see us, and a tremendous hooting and sirens. Luckily our relatively sound fin was towards the town!
Headed for Montreal; it was nearly dark by 7.30. Had a sherry with Burney, Booth, and Scott. They had wirelessed us that a thunderstorm was coming to us, not a very large one. While we were drinking our sherry the first pitch was felt, and Booth and Scott went down in to the control car. Height about 1200 ft, speed 40 knots. Burney and I went out in to the promenade. The ship then hit a vertical gust and began to rise rapidly. Elevators were put hard down to keep her down, till she reached an angle of about 20° nose down. In that position she rose rapidly to 4500 ft, the last 1000 ft being covered in 15 seconds according to Giblett. She then steadied and was brought under control in heavy rain. In this rise the ship swung eight points from her course.
Supper was laid on the centre table of the saloon and shot off, downstairs, up the corridor, till some of it reached Frame 2.
I think the ship must have been at least 35° nose down for a bit of cold meat or a slice of bread to get as far up the nose curvature of the ship as this.
Two twelve foot tears were made in the lower fabric of the starboard fin, which were repaired later. The lights went out and put the ship in to complete darkness for ten minutes, adding to the difficulties. It rained so hard that .3 ton of water came in to the collector in ten minutes.
This was quite a small, normal thunderstorm—so far as we know at present. A rate of rise 4000 ft/min on the ship when driven nose down was achieved, according to good evidence. This would seem to indicate air currents of higher velocity than this.
Since then we have dodged three others, and are now heading for Montreal and hope to moor at dawn. Further comment on these experiences may be deferred till we are all less tired.
I remember the look of that storm very well. It stretched across our path as a bank of clouds apparently about fifteen miles long, slightly bronze in colour and raining underneath. At that time little was known about the violent air currents in and around line squalls; a great deal has been learned since then by brave men soaring in sailplanes. Major Scott was in charge of flying operations, over the captain of the ship. I was in the control car with him before we went up for the sherry, and heard him make the decision to go through it rather than fly round it; we had ample fuel and there was no occasion to take the ship, already damaged, through this storm. In my view, even with the lesser knowledge of those days, Scott should have known better and this decision was a reckless one.
Major Scott was in charge of the last flight of R.101, and was killed in her. That flight started in poor weather, and two hours after the start of the flight, six hours before the airship crashed, a very bad forecast was issued to the ship by radio which might well have caused him to decide to turn back to Cardington and start again when the weather had moderated. If I say that I think he showed bad judgment on this previous occasion it is not to blacken the character of a brave and a likeable man, but because after twenty-five years it should be possible to write candidly about human frailties in the interests of history. Aircraft do not crash of themselves. They come to grief because men are foolish, or vain, or lazy, or irresolute, or reckless. One crash in a thousand may be unavoidable because God wills it so—not more than that. After twenty-five years it should be possible to write truthfully about the other ones.
As at all grave times, there was a lighter side. When the ship plunged nose down a relay of the lighting system jumped out extinguishing all lights, and the same motion upset a five-gallon drum of red dope which had been left open in the crew’s quarters immediately above the control car, having been used for the fin repairs. There was an emergency lighting system in the control car of small orange bulbs over the essential instruments, and this kept going. The situation in the control car therefore was that the ship was so far nose down that it was necessary to hold on, apparently plunging straight into the ground, in thick cloud and rain, with the altimeter going madly the wrong way, completely out of control. At that moment, in the faint orange light, a torrent of sticky red fluid resembling blood poured down into the control car. Grand Guignol could not have done better.
None of us slept that night; we were all busy comparing notes and sorting out exactly what had happened to us, and writing it do
wn while it was fresh in the memory in order that we could provide for future airships being designed to withstand these violent storms which we had met in Canada but not in England. The fin repairs required attention, too, but these were straightforward, being long slits only.
In the middle of the night, at about two in the morning, the myriad lights of a city showed up ahead of us where Montreal should have been, but in the black sky above these lights, suspended in the night, we saw an enormous fiery cross. I stared at it in consternation till somebody voiced my secret thoughts, and said, “That’s not Montreal. That’s the New Jerusalem. This is it, boys.”
We discovered later that Montreal, being a Roman Catholic city, has a great cross made of steel girders erected on the top of Mount Royal; this is picked out in electric lights. That night it brought a healthy laugh among a lot of very tired men.
We moored to the mast at St. Hubert airport at dawn, 78 hours out from Cardington; we had five tons of fuel left. The great circle distance is about 3300 land miles, so we had averaged about 42 m.p.h. It must be remembered that at that time only one aeroplane had made a direct flight across the Atlantic from East to West against the prevailing wind, starting from Ireland and crashing on an island off the coast of Newfoundland at the very limit of its fuel, so that our performance, being twice the speed of ship and train from London to Montreal, gave some commercial promise.
The Canadians gave the ship a tremendous welcome. Over a hundred thousand people visited the airport to see the ship each day for several consecutive days; the city was placarded with welcoming notices, and they even wrote a song about us with a picture of Booth on the cover of the sheet music. There were innumerable functions in the fortnight that we stayed there, but my own time was largely occupied with making good the fins and other defects in the ship. In this we were greatly helped by the aircraft department of Canadian Vickers; needless to say, I saw to it that we had plenty of spare fabric sheets prepared for our journey home.
We stayed in Montreal for twelve days. The defects in the ship were all repaired in two or three days, and the ship then made a local flight to Ottawa, Toronto, and Niagara Falls that lasted for twenty-four hours. I stood down from this flight to permit the maximum number of Canadian passengers to be taken; this was the only flight that the ship ever made when I was not in her. Accordingly I saw her flying for the first time over Montreal; she looked quite a good job.
As they were coming in to land the reduction gear of the starboard forward engine failed, and apparently shook the propeller so that a part of the metal sheathing flew off and penetrated the ship, touching a boom. I must go and investigate this tomorrow. In addition, when landing they did in the ship’s main rope as on the second flight, but they have a spare out here.
I understand that though they have spare engines out here they did not ship out the slinging derricks for changing an engine, and accordingly it is very difficult to change the damaged engine. A pretty position to be in! For this reason they have decided not to change this engine, but to go home on five.
Next day I prescribed the necessary patch for the boom of the girder which had been damaged. The decision to go home on five engines was a reasonable one in the circumstances, since the prevailing wind across the North Atlantic is from the west and we could expect a quick and easy trip. We had spent some time and ingenuity in designing the slinging derricks, which were a sort of detachable crane that could be fitted to an engine car to lower an engine down to the ground when the ship was at the mast, and to hoist up another one. It was irritating that an organisational failure at Cardington prevented this equipment from being on hand when it was needed.
This trip to Canada was my first visit to the American continent. I had two good friends from my Oxford days living in Montreal, and in my short leisure time there I saw something of the way of life in the Dominion and in the countryside around Lake Magog, where one of my friends, Percy Corbett, was buying a small farm. For the first time in my life I saw how people live in an English-speaking country outside England, and in view of my decision twenty years later to go and live in Australia it is interesting to read the last words that I wrote in that diary about Canada.
I would never have believed that after a fortnight’s stay I should be so sorry to leave a country. I like this place; I like the way they go about things, and their vitality. The tremendous physical health of everyone. I am going home, and sorry to go; though I am leaving this country for a little time I cannot believe that I am leaving it for good. I have never been in a place that has got hold of me so much as this has done. We are going home, and there will be a great welcome waiting for us at Cardington, but it will not be like the welcome that they gave us here.
The homeward journey to Cardington was uneventful. We left Montreal in the evening in order to have the calmer conditions of night flying over the continental land mass; we had eleven Canadians on board as passengers, mostly journalists.
August 13th 10.10 p.m. Slipped at 9.28 Montreal Summer Time and got away well, with 9600 gallons of fuel. Headed south and proceeded on a wide circle westwards to cross over Montreal from west to east. We are now heading down the St. Lawrence with a moderate following wind. Cruising on 3 engines at 1600 r.p.m., making about 47 knots with a following wind of 10 knots, say 57 knots over the ground. Height about 1000 feet, moonlight on the river, very pretty. We have just passed Sorrel.
An uneventful journey is a good journey for the technician.
We have had a sweepstake on the day’s run, which I have won with 1250 nautical miles, gathering in $6.75…. We are cruising normally at 52 knots on four engines. It is very damp and warm. Everything is streaming water, and the whole ship is very wet.… Yesterday afternoon after lunch everyone went to bed. This afternoon it will be the same, and I shall follow suit. This is an ancient maritime custom, and should not be neglected.
So we came back to England:
Saturday August 16th. 8.20 a.m. We have had breakfast and passed Avonmouth and Bristol; two aeroplanes came up from Filton and flew beside us for a little time. We are now sliding on over Gloucestershire on a direct course for Cardington.
This has not been a bad trip. We have done what we set out to do when we left England more or less at the time scheduled, and at this stage of airship development I think that constitutes a good performance. It is a pity that the fin went on the way over, but one has to gain experience.
10.0 a.m. G.M.T. Over Bedford; we have about 3200 gallons of petrol left. 56½ hours from the time we left Montreal. We can see the aerodrome; there are not more than fifty cars in all to see us arrive. We slink in unhonoured and unsung in the English style, rather different to the welcome that we had in Montreal.
11.0 a.m. Locked home (to the mast). There are now about 200 cars in all. Time of passage, 57½ hours.
So ended the Canadian flight of R.100, and the last flight she ever made; the ship never flew again. She was put back into her shed at Cardington, and the whole effort of that station was devoted to the R.101 in preparation for her flight to India which ended in disaster. After that disaster the airship programme in England was abandoned, perhaps rightly in view of the increasing efficiency of the aeroplane. R.100 was broken up and sold for scrap; only a few pieces of her structure now survive as museum curiosities and as memorials to our endeavour.
The success of our Canadian flight undoubtedly was instrumental in bringing about the disaster to R.101. Up to that point it was still possible for the Cardington officials to declare that neither ship was fit for a long flight. But when we came back relatively safe and sound from Canada that last way of escape was closed to them; now they had to fly R.101 to India or admit defeat, accepting discredit and the loss of their jobs. They chose to fly.
6
I MADE MY LAST VISIT to Cardington, in a technical capacity, some time in September 1930. It was quite shortly before the last trial of R.101, so I suppose it would have been about the middle of the month. I cannot remember what I went for, b
ut at that time I was drawing up a programme of modifications to R.100 as a result of the experience of our Canadian flight, and I imagine that I went to discuss this with Squadron Leader Booth, the captain, and Captain Meager, the first officer of the ship. Probably the Aircraft Inspection Department inspector came into it, too, because I would have wanted to have a personal talk with him before finalising the modifications.
On that visit, I found a terrible atmosphere at Cardington. I write that with some diffidence, because I made no notes and kept no diary, and I cannot remember now what it was that impressed me so badly except one thing: that the crews of both airships appeared to be completely out of hand. A long period of inactivity was evidently ahead of R.100 and the crew were working largely upon R.101; they seemed to have become uninterested and idle. The officers of R.100 had been put very much on one side by the Cardington officials and were being allowed no part in the preparation of R.101, and the men did not seem to be obeying any orders unless it suited them to do so, which was seldom. There was an atmosphere of cynical disillusionment about the place, very depressing.
I found Booth and Meager virtually doing nothing in a little office in the shed that housed R.100. They were pleased to see me, but I think they had been warned not to talk to me too much; members of our organisation were quite unwelcome at Cardington at that time. They gave me a cup of tea and then, thawing, they shut the door, looked out of the window into the shed to see that no one was about, and pulled out from under a desk a couple of square yards of outer cover fabric. Booth said, “What do you think of that?”
It was ordinary outer cover, linen fabric, silver doped on a red oxide base. On the inner surface two-inch tapes had been stuck on with some adhesive, evidently for strengthening. I didn’t know what I was expected to say, and turned it about in my hands, and suddenly my hand went through it. In parts it was friable, like scorched brown paper, so that if you crumpled it in your hand it broke up into flakes. I stared at it in horror, thinking of R.100. “Good God,” I said. “Where did this come from?”