Origin
In 1922 Vickers proposed a scheme for the development of large commercial airships to provide a passenger service to link the countries of the British Empire. Named the Burney scheme after its creator Dennistoun Burney, it involved the construction of six airships at an estimated cost of £4 milion to be constructed and operated by Vickers . The use of heavier-than-air craft over such distances was seen as impractical at this time, while an airship service across the Atlantic was already in operation.
Following the coming to power of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour adminitration in 1924, the Burney Scheme was rejected and replaced by the Imperial Airship Scheme. This entailed the construction of two airships: one, R100, to be designed and built by a specially established Vickers subsidiary, the Airship Guarantee Company managed by Burney, and the other designed by the Government's Royal Airship Works at Cardington. The R100 would largely use existing technology, while the R101 was intended to act as an experimental test-bed for innovatory and techniques in airship design. The two ships were soon labelled the "Capitalist" ship (R100) and the "Socialist" ship (R101). Further airships would include the best features from both.
Both airships were designed to the same technical specification. This demanded airships with passenger accommodation for 100, a fuel capacity adequate for 57 hours flight at a cruising speed of 63 mph (101 km/h). Acceptance of the airships was conditional upon the completion of a flight testing program which culminated in a flight to India, with a stop in Egypt for refuelling. A further requirement was that both had to conform to an as-yet unformulated formula for airframe strength.
Read more about this topic: Imperial Airship Scheme
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