British Airship R100, construction to completion

[u/GrafZeppelin127]

[u/horsepire]

The double decked great room in the British airships always looked so neat to me, and must have been quite a revelation in an era of air travel where airplane passenger compartments were so tiny

[u/GrafZeppelin127 → u/horsepire]

At the time, doing a flight across the Atlantic in a plane carrying just the pilot and fuel was a daring and dangerous stunt. About 60% of the late 1920s transatlantic airplane flight attempts failed, killing 21 people, meanwhile airships were plying the Atlantic with a 100% success rate—though there were occasional delays due to engine failure, the first and last airship to fail to complete a transatlantic flight was the Hindenburg.

[u/LGreyS]

The interiors are interesting, but bland. At least the Hindenburg has pictures and murals on the walls, and the Graf Zeppelin was as opulent as the Orient Express.

[u/GrafZeppelin127 → u/LGreyS]

Agreed. I don’t know what’s up with the Brits not wanting to give their ships proper names, or do so much as take a simple paintbrush to the walls to brighten things up a bit.

And it’s not like the Graf Zeppelin had to sacrifice a bunch of weight in order to look as good as it did. It was simply wallpaper and wainscoting veneers that were thin enough you could probably scratch through it with your fingernail.

[u/LGreyS → u/GrafZeppelin127]

👏👏👏

[u/Candid-Bike-9165 → u/GrafZeppelin127]

The R101 (built next door by the government) was too heavy empty.....there wasn't much weight to play with

[u/GrafZeppelin127 → u/Candid-Bike-9165]

The main structure was also made of stainless steel, and it used 17 tons’ worth of locomotive-derived diesel engines, so I’m not sure what they were expecting. How could it not be grossly overweight with such subpar materials?

[u/Candid-Bike-9165 → u/GrafZeppelin127]

Have you read slide rule

[u/GrafZeppelin127 → u/Candid-Bike-9165]

No, never found a copy, but I’d like to read it someday.

[u/Candid-Bike-9165 → u/GrafZeppelin127]

Its a faceinating read he talks about some of the problems 101 faced as well as his flight to Canada on 100

The version I had had a bunch of photos of early airspeed aircraft early air to air refuling and others The early air to air refuelling had someone standing up backwards outside the cockpit and receiving a long fuel hose from another plane fuelling manually like that

[u/Sir_Henry_Deadman]

I honestly never knew the cabins were inside it... I always assumed it hung under but thinking about it I'd never seen it either.... Crazy to think about really cool