R38 DISASTER

Evening Star, Issue 17764, 12 September 1921, Page 6

R3B DISASTER

. METALLIC FATIGUE SUGGESTED. LONDON, August 25. An official court of inquiry to investigate the wreck of the airship R3B will meet at Bowden on August 27 under the presidency of Air Vice-marshal Sir J. M. Salmond. It will include a representative of the United States Naval Air Service. Meanwhile discussion is proceeding in the Press regarding the cause of the disaster. Circumstantial evidence that the fire did not start within the structure is supplied by the experience of Zeppelins in wartime which wore brought down by guns and aeroplanes and burned without exploding. It is argued that the fire, if it had started internally, would have burned the gasbags one by one along the whole length of the ship. Assuming that a portion of the frame buckled and the ship began to double up, it is conceivable that some big upright cylindrical petrol tanks on the keel amidships were squeezed to bursting point. The escaping vapor would then flow over and around the engines installed in the wing cars, making it practically impossible for the engine men to prevent contact with the exhaust flames and magneto sparks. It is probable that there was_ no time for a realisation of what was happening to induce them to stop the engines. lire ship had suffered excessive vibration o! her framework between the encircling rings, particularly from the rearward propeller. Several experts declare that this is a common experience, due to the enormous pressure caused by the wind and the propellers, in conjunction with the atmospheric resistance to a fast-flying craft. It is suggested that the breakage occurred either forward of the strengthened girders or at the joining point. It is pointed out that reinforcement often induces weakness in the adjoining parts, possibly because of the unevenness of the rigidity. Some exports believe that a girder snapped through “metallic fatigue,” caused by the molecular change in the composition of the metal duo to vibration. The question of the deterioration of the metal under the strain of vibration and atmospheric changes is very gingerly approached, became duralumin is an alloy that is not fully understood at present. It is believed that the recent examinations would have revealed any essential changes in the metal.

Airmen decline to accept the loss of the R3B ns scaling the fate of air navigation. The vessel was specially constructed for war purposes and very high flying, with the narrowest of margin of safety and tha lightest possible framework. Commercial craft, they say, could be heavier and stronger, and there would be no need to attain high altitudes. Tho story of the survivor Walker shows that there was time to don parachute. He actually ran back and forth, seeking them, but there was only one in his neighborhood, and that was secured by Bateman. Undoubtedly many of the crew were unable to reach tho parachute stations.

Sir William Brancker, director of the Aircraft Manufacturing Company, in an interview, said this was the first time a rigid airship had broken in the air. The accident came at an unfortunate time, for money was short and civil aviation was in the balance. The effect of the disaster would arouse panic in the public, which was most unfair. Moro lives would have been saved had the members of the crew worn parachutes. • Lieutenant Wann made it a rule to wear his always, but the crew probably discarded them because they were heavy and uncomfortable. An extraordinary incident in connection with the disaster is a premonitory feeling experienced by the United States Ambassador, Colonel Harvey, who was in London. Just before the crash he abandoned a game of croquet, and entered a house •with the determination to cable to Washington urging the authorities to reconsider the undertaking of the airship’s flight across the Atlantic.