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 AIRSHIPS
EARLY DAYS
BNW: "I couldn't pass the London Matric
when I left school (Christ's Hospital) because I tried and
failed".
Barnes Wallis became an apprentice at Thames
Engineering at Blackheath, but when work got slack there he
left home and went to J Samuel White's shipyard at Cowes in
1908 and trained as a marine draughtsman and engineer. His
work was building torpedo boats and destroyers and learning
about diesel engines.
In April 1913 as chief assistant to H B Pratt
of Vickers, Wallis turned his mind from the restless sea to
the almost unconquered mysteries of the air. He designed Britain's
second rigid airship, the R.9, for the Navy.
BNW: "Churchill stopped the building
of the R.9 at the beginning of the war because everybody thought
the war would be over in three or four months. Pratt and I
rushed off and enlisted in the Artists' Rifles".
They served for nine months. Then with Pratt,
and temporarily in naval uniform he returned to finish the
design of R.9.
BNW: "Vickers Barrow wouldn't have any of it so I was promptly kicked out of the RNAS and told to get back to my job as a civilian to be presented with white feathers by enthusiastic young ladies".
Barnes Wallis's R.80, designed as a fast Atlantic patrol airship, displayed the ultimate in streamlined shape. He rejected the National Physical Laboratory's research results and used a hull more like an extended ellipse than the conventional cigar shape with parallel sides.
The R.80 showed a significant advance in performance and should have been used as a flying scale model for the R.100 and R.101. But as a privately built ship she was costing less to maintain than the bigger official Naval Constructors' ships. And politically the evidence was 'inconvenient'.
In 1923, whilst the R.80 was still operational, Commander C D Burney and Vickers put forward a scheme for a private passenger service by airship to India and Australia, and formed a subsidiary firm, the Airship Guarantee Company. The next year, the Government launched its own Empire communications scheme for an airship service to India and Canada.
Nevil Shute (Norway) became chief calculator under Barnes Wallis on the private enterprise ship the R.100. He said, "To my mind Wallis was the greatest engineer in England at that time and for twenty years afterwards. It was an education and a privilege to work under him, and I count myself lucky to have done so".
 AIRSHIPS
AGAIN
The British airship programme of 1924-1931 cost about £4 million. In May 1924 it was announced that two new 5,000,000 cubic feet ships would be constructed and that existing ships would be used for experiments. The R.33 was reconditioned and flown and the new R.100 and R.101 constructed and flown. A complete airship base was erected at Karachi; mooring towers and gas plants were positioned in Canada and Egypt, and the facilities at Cardington were enlarged.
The R.100 was as big as an Atlantic liner, yet only 150 tons in weight. The form of her 709 foot long hull was a closed ellipsoid.
BNW: "The hull structure was built from only eleven different parts, differing that is in their outward or mass-produced shape, variations in thickness being ignored. Over half a million of the smallest part, a bracing piece, were used, and they could be ordered by the 100,000 at a time. That they would be fitted into their places anywhere from bow to stern is evidence of the perfection of accuracy to which the structure could be built by virtue of its mathematical derivation."
The R.100 escaped the disastrous fate that overtook the R.101, but her life was all too brief. Supreme effort had gone into her design and construction and her successful double Atlantic flight to Montreal and back to Cardington seemed to augur well for her future. She was comfortable to travel in and easy to handle. But she was put into the Cardington shed to allow the Government-built R.101 to attempt her flight to India. The official bungling and her terrible end virtually killed the airship in Britain. Although the R.100 was prepared for further flights, none came. Because a bad ship had crashed, a good ship was ordered to make her last flight. 1931 saw her dismal end when she was handed over to the breakers for just £450.
Well before the demolition men moved in, indeed even before the R.100 had flown to Canada, Barnes Wallis had moved on to Vickers Aviation.
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