British Airships

The German Navy’s Zeppelin rigid airships are well-remembered today, but Britain’s Royal Navy also operated large airships during and after the First World War. Five of them are present in our U.S. Navy Plan Red game, which takes place in the early 1920s.

His Majesty’s Airship R.36

Britain built her first rigid airship (one with an outer framework of aluminum or wood, as opposed to a non-rigid type like the familiar advertising blimps that get their shape from internal gas pressure) in 1909. Known as R.1 (rigid-type number one), her crews called her “Mayfly.” She was built by Vickers, but based on reports of German Zeppelin design. In 1911, a freak gust of wind caught her as the ground crew rolled her out of her hangar and the ship’s frame broke in half — a common airship accident. She was scrapped on the site and for several years the Royal Navy did without rigid airships.

In April, 1913, a German Army Zeppelin made an emergency landing in Luneville, France. The French made drawings and took numerous photographs before she was handed back to her owners, and shared these with their British allies. Later that year the Royal Navy placed an order with Vickers for a ship based on these drawings, but did not confirm the order until the next year and construction delays pushed back commissioning for what became R.9 until 1916.

The Royal Naval Air Service was founded in 1914, and at the outbreak of war had seven non-rigid airships, only two of which were fit for service. Six more were on order, three in France and three in Germany; observing proper forms, the Royal Navy cancelled its German order as soon as war broke out. Realizing that such craft could prove very useful in spotting submarines, the RNAS expanded its airship branch quickly, ordering dozens of small non-rigid airships for coastal patrol duty. These had short range and endurance, and were not intended for the long-range scouting missions performed by the German Naval Airship Division.

That changed with the Battle of Jutland in June 1916. While the Germans were distressed by what they saw as poor performance by their airship scouts, the British assumed that Zeppelins had spotted the Grand Fleet and warned the Germans of its approach. The Royal Navy wanted the same capability, and pressed for large rigid airships.

That need resulted in an order for six ships of the R.23 class, enlarged copies of R.9. The first four saw no war service and were used in experiments; all had been dismantled or destroyed by the end of 1919. The fifth ship burned in a hangar fire, and only the last of the class, R.29, saw actual military use. She made several patrols over the North Sea, helping to sink two German submarines, and was scrapped in 1919.

Those tests led to the larger, wooden-framed R.31 and R.32. The first of these commissioned five days before the war ended, and went to the airship base at Howden. Leaks in the hangar roof allowed rainwater to drip onto the ship and warp her wodden frame, and damage was so extensive she was scrapped on the spot in early 1919. R.32 took another 10 months to complete, as part of the general slowdown in military projects once the war had ended. She performed successfully, but when the Royal Air Force took over airship operations from the RNAS in October 1919 she transferred to the National Physical Laboratory and spent a year in experimental flights before being broken up.

In September 1916 the German Zeppelin L.33 crashed in southern England, almost intact. The British studied her advanced design concepts closely, as they had nothing to compare with her, and ordered two ships to a nearly-identical pattern. Neither was ready before the war’s end. The first, R.33, commissioned in March 1919 and made several flights before being transferred to civilian registry. She undertook a number of propaganda flights and some experimental ones, launching and recovering airplanes attached to “trapeze” devices under her keel. She would finally be dismantled in 1928 after hard use, with her frame too worn for reconditioning.

R.34 crossed the Atlantic twice.

Her sister, R.34, also enjoyed great success. Commissioned in the late spring of 1919, that summer she crossed from England to Long Island and back again, the first such crossing of the Atlantic by an aircraft. After a number of successful training flights, in January 1921 she was caught in a powerful crosswind while trying to enter her hangar. The winds then drove the ship repeatedly into the ground, and she suffered irreparable damage.

Another German airship came down nearly intact in France in October 1917. The RNAS ordered a new pair of airships based on the newly-captured L.49’s design. The first ordered, R.35, never flew even though she had been nearly completed when the order came to scrap her in the building shed. R.36, the largest British-built airship to date, commissioned on April Fools’ Day, 1921.

Though crewed by the RAF and owned by the Royal Navy, R.36 received extensive modifications during construction for civilian passenger use. She also had engines taken from the German Zeppelin L.71. After some trial flights for the Air Ministry, she did a few publicity stunts, ferried some Members of Parliament about and in June suffered severe wind damage. Repair proved overly expensive, and in 1926 she was finally broken up.

In Plan Red she appears in her military guise, with bomb racks and less speed (the ex-German Maybach diesel engines were added during her conversion).

Five more airships were ordered to an improved design using the technology taken from German craft, papers and experts after the war. But work proceeded slowly without wartime pressure, and eventually all five were cancelled. However, the U.S. Navy wanted a big airship, and to fill the order the Admiralty dispossessed Short Brothers of its construction shed in Cardington and established the Royal Airship Works there. The Americans specified a very sophisticated ship, and the new craft incorporated not only design concepts but parts taken from the five cancelled airships. She would become ZR-2 in American service, but while under British control carried the designation R.38, the same as one of the cancelled ships.

R.38/ZR-2 on trials.

R.38 included parachutes for the entire crew, including a special small parachute for the ship’s cat. After her completion in June 1921, tension grew as the British extended the trails period in order to obtain for training hours for the British aircrew; at one point the RAW suggested 50 trial flights (which would have given R.38 more flying hours in British service than any rigid airship except R.29, R.33 and R.34). Finally they agreed to turn her over after one more flight, and on this fourth and final test expedition, already painted in American colors, R.38 broke up over the River Humber south of Hull. The tail section crashed gently, but the front sections exploded. Forty-four crewmen, including 15 Americans, died in the accident. Britain had built her last military dirigible.

One rigid airship remained, the smaller R.80, ordered to the plans of R.36 but significantly modified after the war. She served as a training craft after commissioning in 1920, and when the U.S. Navy ordered ZR.2 she was loaned out as a training craft to prepare American aircrew. The Americans considered buying her, but ultimately stuck with their desire for a larger ship. She was offered in place of the destroyed ZR-2 but the Americans went with a German-built craft to replace the lost ship.