FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1930
UNTITLED0 - 0087.PDF
FLIGHT, JANUARY 3, 1930 A successful early mooring mast : R.33 riding at the mast at Pulham. (FLIGHT Photo.) the elevators being on the envelope. She had a 35-h.p. " Y" Anzani engine, driving swivelling propellers above the small well-streamlined car. Willows IV was bought by the Navy in November, 1912, the boom being immediately done away with, and a new car made. Naval Airship No. 3 was of an interesting type, built by the Astra firm in France, to the designs of Senor Torres- Quevedo, a Spanish engineer. The distinctive feature of these Astra-Torres airships was the internal rigging system. The main car suspensions were led through sleeves in the bottom of the envelope into the interior, where they branched and were carried up to an internal fabric top-ridge on each side. This resulted in the load of the car being borne entirely by the top surface of the envelope, where any end pull served only to put the fabric in tension, which it was able to resist. The result of this system was that in cross- section the envelope was trilobe, or clover-leaf shaped. No. 3 airship was used a good deal at the beginning of the war, and proved most successful, though another ship of the same type, No. 8, was rather less so. They were the forerunners of the successful series of British-designed classes, " Coastal," " Coastal Star," and " North Sea," that were largely used for anti-submarine work from 1916 onwards. No. 3 had a volume of 230,000 cub. ft., and was driven by two 210-h.p. Chenu engines at a speed of 51 miles an hour. Naval airship No. 4 was a Parseval, bought from Germany, also in 1913. This airship, as has already been stated, was characterised by the extraordinarily fine streamline shape of the envelope, which was interesting in other ways. In the first place, it was three-ply, very strong, with exceptional gas-holding properties. It also incorporated a system of rigging which had many advantages. Forming an ellipse along the under surface was a rigging band, from which ran a number of fabric bands, known as " trajectory bands," right over the top surface and down the other side. These bands were nearly vertical at the centre, but sloped progres- sively more and more towards the nose and, in particular, the tail, so that the weight of the car was well distributed— as in the Astra-Torres, but by a different system—along the whole top surface of the ship. As a result of this, the car was able to be slung unusually close to the envelope. She had two 170-h.p. Maybach engines and, besides doing valuable service in the early stages of the war, proved a most excellent training ship. To have been captain of No. 4, indeed set a seal on an airship pilot's reputation, and qualified him automatically for command of a rigid airship as soon as one became available. This, except for the fact that rigid airship No. 9 was under construction, was the position when war broke out in August, 1914. The story of the war development of British non-rigid airships is too well known to need much elaboration here. Not much in the way of development took place, though a good deal of flying was done with existing ships, until March, 1915, when S.S. 1 was evolved from the envelope of No. 2 (Willows IV), and the fuselage of a B.E. 2 aeroplane. Messrs. Airships, Ltd., built an experi- mental airship to the same specification, but it did not find favour with the authorities, and no more were ordered, though the firm built a number of Maurice-Farman aeroplane- type cars for use under S.S. envelopes. Messrs. Armstrongs also tendered, with an airship with an A.W. aeroplane fuselage, which proved successful, and a number were built and put into service. All the S.S. airships had 60,000 or 70,000 cub. ft. envelopes, and were fitted with either Rolls-Royce or Renault «igmes. In 1916, the S.S.P. (" Pusher ") type was designed, at Kingsnorth, with a more comfortable car, fitted with a 100-h.p. Green engine at the back. The most noticeable novelty of all the S.S. type, which was also in- corporated in the larger non-rigids, was the hinged blower-pipe, taking air from the slip-stream of the pro- peller to the ballonnets, a device which entirely did away with the necessity for carrying an auxiliary engine to drive a blower. Early in 1917, all other S.S.'s were super- seded by the S.S. Zero, designed by the personnel of Capel Airship Station. This type had a most comfortable water-tight car, seating three in tandem, with a Rolls- Royce 75-h.p. engine, mounted on a gantry at the back. The first ship was an immediate success, and the type was standardized, some- ." thing like a hundred being put into service before the Armistice. At the end of the war, experiments were being carried out with several types of " S.S. Twin," with two engines. The most interesting of these was, perhaps, " S.S.E.3," which had an envelope known in the laboratory as shape " U. 721," from which the hull shapes of both R 100 and R 101 are derived. From 1916 onwards, much was done to develop larger ships on Astra Torres lines. The first was the " Coastal " class which had an Astra-Torres envelope with two Avro fuselages cut in half and joined end to end, to provide a tractor and pusher propeller, as car. These were gradually superseded by the rather larger " C Star " class which had a streamlined envelope and improved car, though on similar lines. They had 210,000 cub. ft. envelopes, compared with the 170,000 cub. ft. of the Coastals, and were as a rule fitted with a 100 h.p. Berliet engine forward and 260-h.p. Fiat aft. Concurrently with the " C Star," the " North Sea " type was developed with a 360,000 cub. ft. envelope of improved stream- line shape and a greatly improved enclosed car in which the crew could move about, and were indeed most comfortable. They had 240-h.p. Fiat engines, and one of them soon after the Armistice made a duration flight lasting for 101 hours. Both the " Coastals " and " North Sea " types, though founded on the A stra Torres, were a great improvement in detail on their prototype. The clumsy bunches of rope used for the internal rigging were, for instance, superseded by wire cables. To return to the rigid airships of Count Zeppelin, L.Z.I was built in 1900. The hull was of cylindrical shape with, hemispherical ends and incorporated the structural form, which has been adhered to ever since, of a number of longi- tudinal girders connected at intervals with a series of trans- verse frames forming bays within which the gas-bags are enclosed. The transverse frames are braced by radial wires carried to a ring in the centre of the circumference. Z.I had two cars, each containing a 16-h.p. Daimler engine, con- nected by a long steel boom on which ran, operated by pulleys, two trolley cars for altering the longitudinal trim. It measured 420 ft. long with a diameter of 38 ft. There were 24 longitudinals and 16 transverse frames enclosing 16 gas-bags. This first airship made three flights and though considerable success was achieved it was five years before Zeppelin could collect sufficient funds to build a second airship. On her second flight L.Z.II, which had two 85-h.p. engines, was forced to land, through engine trouble, and had to be moored out in a field. Unfortunately the wind got up and the ship was so badly damaged that she had to be dismantled. In the following April, 1906, L.Z.III was started, and she was completed by October of the same year. She was improved by the addition of stabilising fins on the envelope and had four propellers carried on outriggers on the hull and driven through shafting, a system of propulsion which was adhered to for many years—until the appearance of the L.40 class in 1916. It is impossible to detail all the different Zeppelins that were built and the most one can do is to pick out one or two of the most prominent as instances of the general trend of development. The first passenger airship was the Deutsch- land built in 1910 followed by the Schwaben (1911), the Viktoria Luisa and Hansa (1912). The Schwaben was 460 ft. long, with a diameter of 46 ft. and a volume of 620,000 cub. ft. She had three 145-h.p. Maybach engines. The Viktoria Luisa and the Hansa were sister ships measuring 485 ft. long and 46 ft. in diameter with a capacity of 670,000 cub. ft. In 1913 the Sachsen was added to the " Delag " fleet. She was the same length as the Schwaben, but had a diameter of 50 ft. which increased the capacity to about the same as the 87
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
