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R80
Role	Airliner
National origin	United Kingdom
Manufacturer	Vickers
First flight	19 July 1920
Number built	1

The R.80 was a British rigid airship, first flown on 19 July 1920 and the first fully streamlined airship to be built in Britain. R.80 suffered major damage on its first flight and repairs and modifications delayed it. Following resumption of flight tests it was used briefly to train the United States Navy personnel who were to crew the ill-fated ZR-2 airship. R.80 was retired and eventually scrapped in 1925.

Development

Construction was begun by Vickers in their airship shed at Walney Island, Barrow-in-Furness, in November 1917 to a design by Barnes Wallis and J.E. Temple.<Brooks, p130> Vickers had originally contracted to build R37, but due to war-time steel shortage and difficulties with soil conditions preventing construction of Vickers new larger shed at Flooksburgh, Lancashire, Vickers was not able to build the much larger R37. Vickers had only the smaller shed at Barrow, Walney Island available where completion of the R26 was underway. Vickers proposed a new design which would fit the shed available. Thus the size of the R.80 was limited by the small size of the shed. The R.37 was reassigned to Shorts at Cardington. Unableto build to current Royal Navy design Vickers created a design to the desires of Wallis. The new design did not copy a existing obsolete German design as all prior British airships except HMA NO. 1r had. Wallis created an aerodynamicaly efficient design with advanced structural characteristics.

Work progressed slowly due to labour shortages, and the Admiralty making repeated changes to the specifications. When R.80 was assessd against the presumed capabilities of the recently downed L45 revealed in exagerated form by Kaptainlutenant Waldemar Kolle following the "Silent Raid" the R.80 was judged inferior<Higham p 367><Robinson Zeppelin p 301>. The Admiralty report recommended that when all ships then under construction were completed all work would concentrae on L48 clones. Admeralty specifications changed repeatedly during 1919. With the transfer of airships to the Royal Flying Corps in the summer of 1919 work upon R.80 was temporarily stopped by the Air Ministry with Admiralty concurence.<Higham 367> Work was resumed and was completed in July 1920 when the R.80 was readied for flight.<Higham 367>

and with the end of the First World War the future of military airships was confused by their transfer from the Admiralty to the RAF.

The Air Ministry stopped the work in the summer of 1919 as it was considered that the ship was no longer of military or commercial value.

As the World War ended Vickers proposed a commercial development to fit out R.80 as a passenger transport with a passenger gondola beneath the airship to carry 30 day or 15 night passengers. <airshipsonline R80 Proposedd Commercial Operations> The proposed operations were to link London, paris and Rome. H.B. Pratt wrote a book "Commercial Airships" promoting the concept of Continental airship service as well as trans-Atlantic airships.<Higham p 232> Vickers proposed the R.80 be used in commercial service could be used for tours of the former front line or in a commercial service linking London, Paris and Rome. The British effort to promote airship travel went much further than R.80 and involved the modification of R.36 to a pssanger carrer to no avail and little use.<Higham 363-365>

with commercial objectives in mind but the scheme fell through. Co-designer H. B. Pratt completed a report envisaging an intercity European flight route, similar to that being run by the Zeppelin company:

"The route chosen to Rome is 1,000 land miles which is within the endurance of the ship. It is expected that the ship will fly at a maximum height of 2,000 ft. The route will carry the ship over south England, the over the English Channel to Paris on a direct route. The ship will then deliver mail and passengers, and then pass down in a continued south easterly direction towards Lyon. Passing over Lyon, the ship will turn south through the Rhone Valley and the continue to Nice. At Nice on the French Coast, the ship will turn easterly and skirt the coast and head towards Rome over the sea. The return course will be via the same route."

Operational history

On 19 July, the ship emerged from its shed for its first flight. The ship was damaged on the trial flight as the ship was allowed to bask in the hot afternoon untill the lifting gas became super heated. When released by the ground crew the ship rose too fast. The rate of climb was so high that Barnes Wallis and others were forced to attempt to valve gas as fast as possibile to avoid bursting the gas bags.<Higham pg 367> The result of the gas bag overpressure was extensive buckling of the framework.

The ship was returned to its shed to be repaired, which took until January 1921. After flight tests including experimental work for the National Physics Laboratory R.80 was to be retired. The loss of R.34 resulted in the substitution of R.80 for training the Howden Detachment at Howden, East Yorkshire in February. The US Navy men training to fly the R38 (ZR-2) which was to be sold to the US Navy as ZR-2 flew the R.80. The US Navy made 4 flights in the ship totalling some 8 hours 45 minutes between 26 March 1921 and 1 June 1921.<Robinson & Keller pp 27-28, 199> After these flights, it was flown to RNAS Pulham, Norfolk. There the airframe was used for stress analysis and destructive testing before being dismantled in 1925. In total, this relatively small but well designed craft flew for only 73 hours.

Although successful in trials the R.80 design was too small for the intended use. Many lessons were learnt and incorporated in the design for the R100. One of the lasting innovations introduced by Barnes Wallis during construction was the first use ever of colour-coded wiring for the electrical systems of an aircraft.<Mowthorp p 143>

Specifications

Data from

General characteristics

• Length: 535 ft 0 in (163 m)
• Height: 70 ft 0 in (21 m)
• Volume: 1,260,000 cu ft (35,700 m³)
• Gross weight: 85,680 lb (38,950 kg)
• Useful lift: 33,260 lb (15,100 kg)
• Powerplant: 4 × Wolseley-built Maybach engines (Maybach Mb.IVa) , 240 hp (180 kW) each

Performance

• Maximum speed: 70 mph (113 km/h, 61 kn)

References

• Brooks, Peter W. Zeppelin: Rigid Airships 1894-1940. Washington D.C.: Naval Institute Press, 1992. ISBN 1-56098-228-4
• Griehl, Manfred and Dressel, Joachim Zeppelin! The German Airship Story. 1990 ISBN 1-85409-045-3
• Higham, Robin. The British Rigid Airship 1908–1931. Henley-on-Thames: Foulis, 1961.
• Morpurgo, J. E. Barnes Wallis - A Biography. London: Longman, 1972 ISBN 0-582-10360-6
• Mowthorpe, Ces Battlebags: British Airships of the First World War. 1995 ISBN 0-905778-13-8
• Robinson, Douglas H. Giants In The Sky. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973. ISBN 0-295-95249-0
• Robinson, Douglas H., and Charles L. Keller. "Up Ship!": U.S. Navy Rigid Airships 1919–1935. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1982. ISBN 0-87021-738-0
• Robinson, Douglas H. The Zeppelin In Combat. Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Military/Aviation History, 1994. ISBN 0-88740-510-X
• Swinfield, John. Airship: Design, Development and Disaster. London: Conway, 2012. ISBN 978-1-84486-138-5
• Lord Ventry and Eugene Kolesnik, Jane's Pocket Book 7 - Airship Development, 1976 ISBN 0-356-04656-7
• Lord Ventry and Eugene Kolesnik, Airship saga: The history of airships seen through the eyes of the men who designed, built, and flew them . 1982, ISBN 0-7137-1001-2

External links

• Walney Island Airship Sheds
• Airship Heritage Trust R80 page

Category:1920s British airliners Category:Airships of the United Kingdom R80 Category:Vickers airships Category:Barnes Wallis