R34
The English rigid airship R34 was the first airship to cross the Atlantic in 1919 , making the first non-stop east-west transatlantic flight ever. Her sister ship R33 was put into service almost at the same time. Both ships were built on the basis of the type "R" Zeppelin military airship L33 that had crashed in England . It was built by the Beardmore Inchinnan Airship factory in Inchinnan . Work began in 1917 during the First World War . The construction plans also included bomb mounts and machine gun places. The ship was completed with the end of the war. The first trip took place on March 14, 1919. The delivery trip took place on March 24, 1919 and was overshadowed by many complications, such as jammed height control wires, which caused the vehicle to climb above impact height , and detaching gasoline tanks. There were also problems with the landing.
After the war ended, the Admiralty loaned the airship to the Ministry of Aviation to conduct long-range tests. The ship carried out a demonstration voyage over the North German coast from June 17 to 20, 1919.
The airship
Due to its impressive size at the time, it was given the ironic nickname "Tiny", because it was larger than a dreadnought battleship .
The dimensions were impressive back then. R34 had a lifting gas volume of approximately 55,230 cubic meters (1,950,000 cft), was 196 m (643 ft) long and was approximately 24 m (79 ft) in diameter. The design of the ship, like that of the sister ship R33 , was largely copied from the German L 33 war zeppelin captured in England . (The numbers coincided purely by chance.)
The drive consisted of five new Sunbeam Maori engines, each with an output of 200 kW (270 hp). This enabled the ship to reach a speed of around 100 km / h (62 mph ). The entire structure had been painted to protect it from corrosion. The ship had a buoyancy of around 59 tons and a payload of 26 tons.
Atlantic voyage
The ship started on July 2, 1919 under the command of Major George Herbert Scott of East Fortune in East Lothian / Scotland for the first non-stop Atlantic crossing of a rigid airship and reached Mineola / New York (Long Island) on July 6, 1919. The outward journey lasted 108 hours and 12 minutes, at that time a fraction of a sea voyage on this route. When the ship arrived, it only had fuel for another 30 minutes. An officer parachuted from a height of 600 m (2,000 ft) and coordinated the landing on the ground. He was the first person whose foot touched the ground after a non-stop east-west Atlantic crossing in the air.
The return trip to Norfolk , England began on July 9, 1919 and only took 75 hours and 3 minutes due to the wind conditions. There were 33 people on board, including a stowaway. The airship was then overhauled in Howden .
A year earlier there were plans in Germany to cross the Atlantic with the Zeppelin LZ 114 . The planned trip in the spring of 1919 was prohibited at that time. The first west-east non-stop transatlantic flight by an aircraft took place just a few days before R34. Arthur Whitten Brown and John Alcock were on 14./15. Flown to Ireland from Newfoundland on June 6th, 1919 . The first east-west non-stop flight of an airplane across the Atlantic was still almost a decade away.
The next airship to cross the Atlantic was the Zeppelin LZ 126 in 1924 , which was renamed the ZR-3 "USS Los Angeles" after its delivery to the US Navy.
The last ride
In early 1920 the US decided to buy the R38 airship from England. During the preparations an American airship crew was trained in England. In January 1921, 18 months after crossing the Atlantic, this team practiced with the R34. It was the first voyage since the overhaul and British airships were on board to check out the repairs. During the training run the weather turned and the airship was pushed to the ground by sudden downdrafts near Guisborough . This happened on January 28, 1921 at 00:10 a.m. The impact woke all sleeping crew members, but the ship ricocheted off the ground and came back into the air.
The master then had the engines stopped for the damage assessment.
The control pod was badly dented and there was heather all over it. It took the crew 15 hours to get back to Howden after three machines had failed. In two of them, the propellers had jumped off due to contact with the ground. After the arrival of the airship in Howden had the 400-strong ground crew major problems, the ship einzuhallen because quite strong wind was blowing. After the ship hit the ground several times, it was decided to anchor it in some trees nearby. The next day, R34 was inspected and declared too badly damaged to repair. It was scrapped within the next three days.
According to another source, the last trip was on February 27th.
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.airshipsonline.com/airships/r33/index.html www.airshipsonline.com The Arship Heritage Trust, accessed November 3, 2013
Web links
- www.aht.ndirect.co.uk/airships/r34/ R34 at Airshipsonline (English)
- Race over the clouds