I've followed this thread with great interest as from a very young age I've always been fascinated by the old rigid airships. I think the double-crossing of the Atlantic in 1919 by the R34 was a fabulous achievement and one which now is largely forgotten.

However, and this is shameless 'thread-creep' so someone shoot me down if you wish, I would rather take exception with the assertion that the R100 was "almost without problems". I recently re-read George Meagher's 'My Airship Flights' in which he described the experience of flying the R100 in some detail. And as a pilot I found it terrifying in ways which didn't enter my head in my (pre-aviation) youth. The near disaster over the St. Lawrence when the ship was almost stuffed into the water by a line squall, and suffered significant damage, was a good example. I'm not saying she was AS bad as the R101, just that the difference was marginal by modern standards and that luck was most of the equation. I suspect that if the R100 had set off for India instead of the R101, her chances of getting though were not a lot higher.

They were wonderful machines but it's probably a good thing their time has passed. People think that hydrogen inflammability was the issue, but when you look at what happened to the R38, Akron, Makon, Shenandoah, possibly the Dixmude and almost the R100, I think poor structural integrity, lack of power and very low ceilings made all large rigids completely impossible by anything approaching modern standards.

It's Relative.
 

For sure, by modern standards, any airship is basically a nonsense. Then again, so is crossing the North Atlantic in a Great War Vickers Vimy......! Airships, as we know now, were an evolutionary dead-end, but at the end of the 1920's, it's easy to see how the 'Ships of the air' concept appealed. Especially as conventional heavier than air flying machines were hardly less dangerous - not much faster (81.5mph max for R100, the HP42 only cruised at 100mph.) - and certainly less appealing to passengers more used to luxury liners. We know now that it was all a mirage of self-delusion, but at the time, they lacked the 100% accuracy of hindsight.

I don't claim and great knowledge of airships or their history, they were just an interesting blip. I was aware of the St.Lawrence incident, and that bad weather had led to some of the covering being ripped-off the tail-fins, but I understand that that was patched-up before they had even reached their destination.

Ultimately, most of the big airships seem to have bitten the dust, but they were clearly impressive beasts in the flesh.

Would it be admissible to mention the Goodyear K class dirigible blimps? They were made in quantity, wiki says 134, and did good service in WWII in asw and sar roles, using airship low and slow performance in conjunction with long loiter duration. And some did cross the Atlantic to help guard the Mediterranean.

Thanks for all the kind advice on plastics, guys. Alas I started out trying to think up another balsa-and-tissue model. Not sure that I like plastic work, I'm no good at sculpting and I dread using smelly glues in my kitchen. Fear of the unknown?

In 1919, Alcock and Brown made the first aeroplane crossing of the Atlantic - 2POB, with the prevailing wind.

The same year, the R34 crossed the Atlantic, against the prevailing wind, with 37pob.

By 1929, the year that both the R100 and R101 made their first flights, 239 people had successfully crossed the Atlantic in airships. There had in the same period been 27 attempts to cross the Atlantic by aeroplane, 16 of which had failed, at the cost of 21 lives.

So, in 1930, whilst the Imperial aviation plans included development of aeroplanes as well, all the evidence looked pretty convincingly that the future of long distance air travel belonged to airships. And over a few years coming, the multiple Atlantic crossings by the Hindenberg (and two crossings by the R100) would appear to have confirmed that.


In my opinion, even now airships have a future. But, it's going to be in science observations, telecoms relay tasks, and other specialist roles that use the long endurance of an airship, without being compromised by the problems with lack of payload capability.

But I predict that every project aiming to do anything resembling mass passenger transport, or cargo transport, will fail, just as they always have since 1940.

G

Better insert "non-stop"in front of "crossing", lest we offend our North American cousins with their NC-4 "airplanes" puddle-jumping across by stages the year before ...... :)

Henry, It would be worth considering pultruded carbon fibre rods instead of balsa for the longerons. They are available down to 0.25mm dia. and are much more robust than balsa. I built a geodetic wing test piece with the stuff and was amazed just how incredibly stiff it was. You can put it together in no time with cyanoacrylate (superglue) adhesive. Look under 'Hi tech materials' here:

Mike Woodhouse - Free Flight Supplies
My brother built a semi-scale model of the R33 back in the early 70s. The hull was folded from thin card with the engine pods from balsa. The props were celluloid discs. As I recall it was about 20" long and 3 1/2" diameter. It was supported from the mooring mast at the front and a single 18swg piano wire rod about 3/4 way along, pushed into the sundela baseboard.

Update: A look in Mechta Senior's attic the other day revealed the model does still exist. 40 years and a couple of house moves have taken their toll, so it looks a bit R101-ish post-crash but pre-fire. Please bear in mind my brother was about 11 or 12 when he made this.

That thing in front of the nose is the front roundel made out of electrician's tape, which lost its 'sticktion' a long time back, and, yes, the top of the mooring mast did start life on a Fairy Liquid washing up bottle! Mechta Senior reckons it was based on the R34, I said R33 because googling pictures made me think R33 was parallel in the middle whist the R34 was more rugby ball shaped.

http://i817.photobucket.com/albums/z...ps2150145e.jpg

I would also recommend George Meagher's book mentioned earlier. The bravery of the early airship crews was incredible.

Mechta - Interesting. R33 and R34 were very similar. Will look at carbon fibre rods, link duly bookmarked. :ok:

Carbon Fibre rods sound like a good idea. 4D Model Shop near me (just over Tower Bride) has a variety of different profiles, tubes and shapes in a variety of materials. Sometimes just having a browse at what is readily available can get the brain cells working, see if anything here looks promising:

Strip & Shape

They were sister ships, built by different firms, but basically the same design - based upon a captured (well, shot down in Essex) Zeppelin, the LZ33.

Jointly they were referred to as the R33 class.

G

joy ride Thanks for 4D Model Shop link, looks very useful for specialist materials, am drooling over several items. Also the multi-model Meccano set, that is a must-have and definitely on my list of future purchases. Interesting location, I used to work down-river at Enderby Wharf and enjoyed walking both banks.

My old workshop was in Bombay Wharf, Marychurch Street, Rotherhithe, with an alleyway between it and the river which is constantly used for films and TV programmes, you probably walked along there, might even have had a drink at my old local, The Mayflower, sited where the famous pilgrim ship set sail from. Nice area, but now massively developed and turned into a wealthy ghetto.

I cycle over to 4D and though not cheap it is a fantastic resource. They have some superb model palm trees and I will use one in my diorama.

I am just trying to think of any airship models I might have seen. I think there are some in the cabinets in the flight gallery at the Science Museum, but certainly they are far rarer than model !

Joyride, Revell do a 1:720 scale Hindenburg and did a 1:169 Goodyear GZ20 'Blimp' with illuminated messages on the side.

A quick google reveals that the Science Museum have the following models. Some are on loan or may not be on display:

• The Giffard Airship 1852
• The Airship 'Dupuy de Lome' 1872
• The Tissandier 'La France' Airship 1883
• Santos Dumont No.IV 1901
• The Lebaudy Airship 1904
• Royal Navy C23 Coastal Airship 1917
• R34
• Thunder & Colt Hot Air Airship
• Various Airship Industries/Skyships Airships

More info here: Search - - Science Museum

Another good resource of 'what is where' is here (a bit dated): Airship Museums

and: The Airship Heritage Trust

I'm sure the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust must have some airship models, but I can't find pictures of them. It wasn't that long ago (1980s) that anyone visiting the RAE library had to walk through an airship shed to get there, and apprentices cast themselves surface plates in the foundry, which lived in the top half of another airship shed (now on display, sans cladding).

https://www.flickr.com/photos/europe...te/4986007083/

This pic of a large model of R34 was taken in August 2010 at the Scottish National Museum of Flight, East Fortune. It is probably the Science Museum model on loan.

Okaay - I've been building other models, and still kicking around ideas for the R34, some the full metre long and others about 0.4 metres long. I really want to do the full metre size, and with my skill set (what there is of it) still want to do it in balsa and tissue.

I think I have a viable design which starts out as a cruciform 'silhouette' in balsa with the gradual addition of ribs and longerons. The cruciform is hollow to minimise weight and only the major ribs will be solid, ie full diameter, with the remainder hollow in the sense that they follow the periphery and do not extend to the centre.

A problem with tissue is that you cannot glue to it, so it has to be fully supported by balsa in areas where fins or gondola supports have to penetrate the skin. The fins will fit in slots between two sheets of balsa, the tissue can be glued to both and then slit so the fins can drop in. The balsa keel will support the tissue where the gondolas mount.

Positioning all the ribs will be done by first cementing stops in place, this can be done before assembly starts. A lot of the ribs will be of common size and shape, so a metal cutting template will be helpful.

The construction sequence will be lower half first, built inverted, then upper half added with lower half supported on the flat balsa keel.

You have clearly set yourself a tricky structural challenge!. I think 1 metre will be much more striking visually. I look forward to seeing some work in progress photos, good luck!

Thanks j r, will be making haste slowly and taking plenty of pics on the way.

Probably will be posting on a fresh thread on JB, I'm a tart for publicity.

Don't hold your breath. Four years until the centenary.....

I will look out for your new thread!
The War Department and I sometimes go to Grain for a quiet stroll and somewhere there, near the rusting WW1 U Boat there is apparently a farm building made from the roof of a WW1 airship hangar.

Talking of displaying scaled down airships, this is rather pretty.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v...93824688350458

G

Very nice, I would like to have one of those wafting around my workshop.

Seems that others in the world are interested in modeling great airships of an earlier period...

My build - Scratchbuilt 1/144 Zeppelin Q Class - ARC Discussion Forums

C2j