R101: Ship of Dreams (BBC, 2001)

i visit cardington a couple of times a year and i like to come to pay my respects for my father and to visit the grave where he and his brave colleagues were laid to rest i'm extremely proud to think of what they did for so little return i wonder whether in fact they are really remembered for what they did they laid their lives down for a cause which they thought was something that was going to be world shattering and was going to connect continents and be a really superb means of transport but obviously it just wasn't to be 75 years ago roy alton's father was involved in a project that was to change the face of aviation forever [Music] the 1920s were a time of depression britain was still recovering from a world war the country was desperate to regain its former pride out of this came a dream to build great airships that would circle the globe linking the furthest corners of the empire britain would once again lead the world [Music] the project itself was tremendously ambitious i mean this was the biggest aircraft that had ever been built it was the largest flying objects ever conceived there were to be a fleet of these giant airships initially though just two were to be built the r-100 and the r101 the r100 would be made by a private company in yorkshire while the r101 would be constructed under the control of the government at cardington in bedfordshire the r101 was planned from the outset as a kind of flying ocean liner she was designed to carry a hundred people in considerable comfort at around 90 miles an hour in the 1920s airplanes were still very cramped and uncomfortable and they hadn't got much of a duration couldn't go far without refueling so the future was definitely seen to be the airship which could go at least 48 hours without refueling and could carry people fairly rapidly in considerable comfort the airship was good news for local employment hundreds of construction workers would be needed carlington in those days where the royal airship works were was seen to be the kind of air hub of the empire the heathrow of its day and so you had all the support services that you would get on a major airport now the airship would be over 700 feet long and 90 feet high i'm a feat of engineering the technology was cutting edge nothing of this size had been attempted before my name is nelly burton and i worked at the air on the airship when i was 19 and my job was some you had the they had a big outer cover like but um you had to put some joins in it and and then do them with a brush with glue in that to stick them together and then they had to dry out and then you took it to the other women and then they done it on their machines right through machining all the time the outer cover of the airship was made of specially treated linen in total five acres of material would be used heavy to carry a bear and that you know move it about turn it around and do this do that with it it was some silver color and it was more like waterproof stiff the r 101 basically consisted of a framework a mixture of stainless steel and derailment covered in irish linen and within that framework to give her the lift was in her final form about 17 vast gas bags made of the intestines of oxen which all had to be scraped and prepared by hand and then sewn together by the ladies at cardington [Music] the gas bags were filled with highly inflammable hydrogen it was hoped that they could use the more inert helium but america had a monopoly on healing at the time and it wasn't made available to the british government it wasn't hard work it wasn't piece work you just went your own way you know just plodded on they couldn't have it as piece work because people had rushed it about you see and then could have caused trouble couldn't they a lot of work on the r101 was subcontracted out and the framework was given to bolton paul aircraft in norwich because they were the world leaders then in metal aircraft design and when they'd prepared the gerderwork of bolton pool they then sent it to cardington for assembly and number one shed very much like a giant meccano kid and not one single piece of gerda work was rejected by the royal airship works as being faulty or out of tolerance or anything it was really a remarkable piece of work by both once the r101 had been built the next step was to get her out of the shed and to the mooring mast half a mile away because the r101 was such a vast aircraft it was necessary to use a lot of people to get her in and out of the shed and the way they did this was on handling ropes and they used to pull on these ropes to actually steer her this way all that [Music] it was exciting and i was really frightened at times because love you had to hold one rope and then when they told you it was going because they sent it on trial and then you had to um hold on to the rope and then when you see it moving and just going out like that you had to leave go of it i should have went up with it first time she came out there were about five four five hundred people came from raf henlo and a group were rather reluctantly brought in from the bedford labor exchange at five o'clock in the morning to actually manhandle her across the airfield so that they could get her onto the high mooring mast the r101 was designed to be as elegant as an ocean liner up to 52 passengers would be able to travel in comfort and style the scale of the airship was enormous there was a dining room there was a lounge for the size of the lounge we're talking about something that's the size of a hotel well when you first boarded our 101 you came down from the mast into the actual accommodation which was situated within the hull of the ship and your approach was on a royal blue carpet the passenger accommodation the cabins themselves weren't too big but they were designed to convert into day cabins rather strong looking walls were just canvas and each one was equipped with a porthole which didn't actually look out anywhere but it gave you the feeling of security that you had this portal in actual fact it was a mirror or an electric light disguised incredibly on a hydrogen-filled airship there was a smoking room this was approached through an air lock and it's fairly frightening to think that you can actually sit down in the in the bottom of the ship somewhere and smoke a cigarette with five million cubic feet of very inflammable hydrogen above you but it was done and the ship didn't actually catch far because of that three course meals could be served up fine wines it was silver service um the chief steward had been recruited from the white star line where he'd served on the olympic so it really was the actual height of luxury [Music] after nearly five years of planning r101 was finally ready to make her first flight in the autumn of 1929 it was wonderful to see one of them in the air and it was a massive thing and i never thought i should get as near as to it as that i feel proud of myself that i was there when it was being built yeah i'm real proud about it [Music] early trials of r101 seemed encouraging but it wasn't long before some serious flaws were discovered the r101 was supposed to be quite easy to fly part of the design features were an interesting servo system that made it much easier to control these enormous rudders and elevators but in the event they found they didn't need the servers she responded quite well but the main problem was that she had a nasty habit of kind of surging in flight she she sort of lolloped along almost and her nose kept going down and it took a lot of effort to actually keep her nose up and keep her at a safe height to fly my name is roy alton and my father was leonard alton he was one of the height coxswains on the r101 and he was responsible for elevation of the of the ship he was at the controls of the r 101 on one of its earlier trials when it flew over hendon and dipped in salute to king george v but unfortunately it wasn't dipping in salute it was pretty well out of control and they had a hell of a job to get it back to cardington in one piece she also had the trouble that the gas bags would chafe on the framework and lose gas and of course if you lose gas you lose lift very early on in the 101 program it was discovered that she hadn't got a useful enough payload to go on particularly long voyages and it was decided that the best thing to do would be to cut her in half and actually put a whole new 44 foot long bay into her to actually give her a few more useful tons of payload as she was originally built she could just about lift herself and her crew and her fuel and that was almost it [Music] although the r101 was supposed to be an experimental ship there was pressure to put it into active service the labor government's minister for heir lord thompson was eager for r101 to fly to india critics claimed he wanted to use the ship for his own personal advancement lord thompson had ambitions to become the next viceroy of india arriving in the country aboard the airship would make a big impression then of course there was the the political travesty of trying to get it to go to india uh in time for the for the conference there before it was ready and the all the crew were doubtful as to its viability following pressure from the crew lord thompson agreed to push back the day to the flight but was insistent the trip to india still go ahead the privately built r-100 had recently flown to canada and back lord thompson was keen to prove that the government-backed r101 could also be a success my father thought that the ship wasn't ready to fly but i don't think he at that time i don't think he realized that thompson and his and his boys were the people who were insisting that it went the r101 had a huge amount of publicity obviously surrounding her although airships had flown to america and one of the german zeppelins had actually flown from bulgaria right down to africa the voyage from england to india was quite a considerable feat in those days and they'd actually built off built stations on the way down where she could refuel and stop over and the first of these was in egypt so the idea was that she would fly from bedford the first leg down to egypt and then across to karachi where the the next major station was were the mast and the shed the ship had never flown uh a full trial a full speed trial full power that is even before it went on its final flight it it was really an accident waiting to happen [Music] after months of uncertainty and despite the concerns of the crew a date for departure was finally set r101 would set off for india on october the 4th 1930 my name is albert george hunt my father william george hunt was the chief coxswain of the ill-fated 101. i left work at 12 o'clock and uh i got to the area drum and father was just coming out of the gate so i got off of the bike walked along with him with only a few hundred yards and i said to him are you nearly ready for takeoff and daddy said no we've got several hours working at lad so we went in that air dinner and then he got up and picked up his flight bag and that and kissed me mother goodbye and said goodbye to me sister and i walked down the road with him a little way until we got to the number one to the number one shed but then he stopped and he took his bag from me and he said to me now look lad i want you to make me two promises so i said yes dad so he said one is that you'll join the navy they want you to and the other one is you'll promise me that she'll look after your mother and your sister because he said i may not be coming back off of this fright and with that he turned and walked off there'd been some trouble with the airship in the week before with the outer covering and a lot of heavy rain and some of the crew were not too happy with the state of the ship and the fact that she hadn't had all her trials so it was with a feeling of some trepidation that uh they actually loaded her and made ready for the flight the other thing they weren't too happy about was the the loading aspect lord thompson had brought an immense amount of luggage with him including a very large persian carpet which was to be used at state banquets lots of cases of champagne and all sorts of things like this again for the banquet they went aboard the ship and they because of the weight restrictions the ship was heavily overloaded they were only allowed to take a board with them a paper parcel with a clean shirt and clean underwear they weren't even allowed to take on board a suitcase because of the weight it was said that the weather report had been received just before they left which said that if they waited another 12 hours they would have a following wind and clear weather all the way down to egypt but it was felt that as the the press was there the cameras were rolling everybody was expecting them to go they should go and it must have been with some considerable trepidation that they eventually decided that they must go i remember the night it left we went down to my mother took us down to the uh to the field it was a very miserable night uh drizzling and uh the roar of the engines was quite remarkable it was a horrible night it just started to drizzle the rain they had a viewing area for people down at the mass but i wasn't going to carry my sister all the way down there so we went across the number two shed and showered under there the actual day of departure was far from ideal weather-wise it was a rising gale driving rain and it just got worse towards evening they were due to leave at just after half past six that evening and the weather really had got foul by then it didn't auger well at all she finally took off it seemed to me very hesitantly and climbed away and and went towards bedford it didn't get up it didn't get up high it was very low when it went over the like bedford bridge they said it was well it was because you could see it was a plane it was low it didn't get up she cleared that turned and came back so i said let the bedford people see their airship the last i saw of her was it's about two miles away and she was just climbing and climbing for high at about one o'clock in the morning the next day it was becoming clear that the rain was probably going to beat them and the gale was still rising and it's possible that the ship was actually going to make for an emergency landing ground that had been prepared at wally airport near paris at about two o'clock in the morning they were just changing over the watches and two of the engineers who were changing over in the engine cars had to look out of of the car and saw the pinnacles and windows of a great gothic church going past at our level which is when they realized something was wrong and they were much too low down and this was actually the town of beauvais and the airship was rapidly approaching the beauvais ridge which has very strange wind patterns and downdrafts about three minutes later she was duly caught in one of those downdrafts coupled with the fact that she'd absorbed so much rain water that the forward part of her outer covering just gave way and deflated the front two gas bags so she lost all lift at the front as it were and she just went down in fairly steep dive the helmsman brought her nose up again and she went down in another dive and by this time it was it was too late and she nosed in quite gently in into a wood on the edge of the bow bay ridge this was really not a crash as such but more a forced landing in fact it gave time for sky hunt to actually go through the airship and so warned the crew saying we're down lads which i'll have to get out the ship came to rest it landed like that and there was just a shortcut that uh before it went up in flames my father came to the door there was six survivors out there and he said anybody seen wally that was wally potter he's mate they said no so he's reporting to someone else if i can find him and then he went back in the ship went up and exploded unfortunately the two forward engine cars had been pushed into the envelope of the airship the two gas bags that are deflated were leaking hydrogen the heat of the cars ignited that hydrogen and the whole thing just went up five and a half million cubic feet of hydrogen just exploded [Music] of the 54 crew and passengers on board the airship 48 died in the crash [Music] it was about six o'clock in the morning when my mother came into my room and said get up sun get up son she said the ship's crashed and your father's missing so when i went downstairs there was a messenger there and got hold of me and told me i've got to be a brave lad and all the rest of it you know [Music] so we heard about the crash the next morning when a dispatch rider appeared at the gate with a very non-committal letter to say something to the effect that dear madame your husband is believed to have been lost in the r101 which was a pretty pretty shaking experience and i remember my mother coming to tell me that um i'd never see my father again oh i thought it was dreadful because they were all young fellas oh i thought it was dreadful terrible [Music] the news of the disaster absolutely stunned people around the world it totally shocked france as much as it shocked england this was the biggest thing since the titanic had gone down in 1912. victims were brought back and were the first civilians to lie in state in westminster hall and people queued from before eight o'clock in the morning until midnight to actually come and pay their respects it just stunned the country it it was on such a vast scale and there were so many hopes been pinned on the airship it was people were just numb [Music] after memorial services at saint paul's cathedral and westminster cathedral the coffins were taken by train to bedford and then onto cardington where they were finally laid to rest i went to the funeral and although i was very young i remember standing on the edge of this great open space it didn't appear to be a hole in the ground because it was so big that all i can remember were the mast coffins covered with their flags with their union flags it was a very moving event i think there was thousands there took us all the time to get a little bit where they let us through but we were standing along by the edge of the cemetery we couldn't get in because there were so many there oh everywhere was they come from all directions all places to come to the funeral people did [Music] the shops all closed flags were all off masks it was very pathetic it was really but i've never seen anything like it i don't want to see anything like it anymore anyway i think you should remember the r101 as being a classic example of british inventiveness getting ahead of itself it was just too big i don't get sad about it it's nostalgic but i'm not sad so much really 70 years ago and memory fades and life has to go on [Music] you

Channel: Alejandro Flores-Ibarra

Views: 10,275

Rating: 4.9726028 out of 5

Keywords: R101, Airship, Rigid airship, Dirigible, Disaster, BBC, BBC documentary, 2001, 1930, BBC history documentary, Aviation, Aviation documentary, Aviation history documentary, Aviation history, British aviation, British aviation documentary, Aviation disasters, Aviation disaster documentary, Aircraft, British airship

Id: IqgriartwAk

Length: 28min 16sec (1696 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 05 2020