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Concept
R101
Summary
R101 was one of a pair of British rigid airships completed in 1929 as part of the Imperial Airship Scheme, a British government programme to develop civil airships capable of service on long-distance routes within the British Empire. It was designed and built by an Air Ministry–appointed team and was effectively in competition with the government-funded but privately designed and built R100. When built, it was the world's largest flying craft at in length, and it was not surpassed by another hydrogen-filled rigid airship until the LZ 129 Hindenburg was launched seven years later.
After trial flights and subsequent modifications to increase lifting capacity, which included lengthening the ship by to add another gasbag, the R101 crashed in France during its maiden overseas voyage on 5 October 1930, killing 48 of the 54 people on board. Among the passengers killed were Lord Thomson, the Air Minister who had initiated the programme, senior government officials, and almost all the dirigible's designers from the Royal Airship Works.
The crash of R101 effectively ended British airship development, and was one of the worst airship accidents of the 1930s. The loss of 48 lives was more than the 36 killed in the much better-known Hindenburg disaster of 1937, though fewer than the 52 killed in the French military Dixmude in 1923 and the 73 killed when the USS Akron crashed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New Jersey in 1933.
Imperial Airship Scheme
R101 was built as part of a British government initiative to develop airships to provide passenger and mail transport from Britain to the most distant parts of the British Empire, including India, Australia and Canada, since the distances were then too great for heavier-than-air aircraft. The Burney Scheme of 1922 had proposed a civil airship development programme to be carried out by a specially-established subsidiary of Vickers with the support of the British government. The scheme drew support from the Air Ministry, which sought more airships and a base in India.
Official source
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