BRITISH AIRSHIP 101

Taranaki Daily News, 9 July 1929, Page 2

BRITISH AIRSHIP 101

NEARING COMPLETION. A VISITOR'S IMPRESSONS. London, May 28. One of the members of the party from the Royal Aeronautical Society who paid a special visit to Cardington to see the State airship RlOl has given some impressions to The Times. “Those who went into the ship,” he writes, “were agreeably surprised at the spaciousness of the public rooms for the passengers. The dining saloon, it is true, only seats 50 at a time, and the smoking-room is also restricted in size, but the main lounge is a flue apartment, 60ft by 32ft, stretching across the full width of the ship, with a raised verandah on each side over 7ft wide. This has a handrail on ships’ lines, and leaning against it the passengers have a magnificent view through the side of the ship, which is formed of safety-glass panels, while above other panels admit plenty of light. Graceful pillars hide essential structural members, and clusters of electric lights are grouped round them. A number of comfortable looking settees line the walls, and the centre of the upper deck will eventually bo furnished with club chairs and tables. Many of the visitors, standing on the upper deck and where it was not covered in looking up nearly 100 ft, to a mazy mass of girders and bracings and suspension wires, found it hard to adjust preconceived ideas of ocean travel in liners made of stout steel to the requirements of airship travel, where low structure weight and large volumes spell efficiency. BOARDING BY MAST. “They saw too much of the works, as it were, and if they come to the ship when she is lying at the 200 ft mooring tower not far away, and then walk into the ship they will probably be equally surprised at the apparent solidity of the vessel. Then, they will board the ship from a covered way, leading into a long closed-in corridor, and from the moment they leave the ground in the passenger lift until they arrive in their quarters they will have no real impression of leaving the solid ground for a vessel floating in space. True, once in their berths they will recognise that solid partitions of wood or steel are not possible where every pound of structure weight means a pound less of paying load, and on Saturday the party were able to see how ingeniously painted fabric can make a partition, and how a slight give in a floor may bo permitted when it consists of three-ply suitably stiffened, which weighs only a little over Jib per sq ft, and yet will stand a uniform dead loading of 1701 b per sq ft. “Towering high in the air, the upper rudder of the ship now in position appeared small until the visitors found on tresles on the floor a huge tubular and strongly braced structure some 40ft long, and discovered that this was the companion lower rudder.”