Lighter Than Air Read online

  The Pioneer

  Upon this marble bust that is not I

  Lay the round, formal wreath that is not fame:

  But in the forum of my silenced cry

  Root ye the living tree whose sap is flame.

  I, that was fierce and valiant, am no more -

  Save as a dream that wanders wide and late.

  Save as a wind that rattles the stout door,

  Troubling the ashes in the sheltered grate.

  The stone will perish; I shall be twice dust.

  Only my standard on a taken hill

  Can cheat the mildew and the red-brown rust

  And make immortal my adventurous will.

  Even now the silk is tugging at the staff;

  Take up the song – forget the epitaph.

  Edna St Vincent Millay

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by

  Pen & Sword Aviation

  an imprint of

  Pen & Sword Books Ltd

  47 Church Street

  Barnsley

  South Yorkshire

  S70 2AS

  Copyright © Guy Warner 2016

  ISBN: 978 1 47382 902 2

  PDF ISBN: 978 1 47382 907 7

  EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47382 904 6

  PRC ISBN: 978 1 47382 903 9

  The right of Guy Warner to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

  Typeset in Ehrhardt by

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  Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd,

  Croydon, CRO 4YY

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  Contents

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 From the 1850s to the 1890s

  Chapter 2 From the 1890s to the start of Neville’s Aviation Career

  Chapter 3 The ‘Golden Age’ before August 1914

  Chapter 4 From August 1914 to February 1916

  Chapter 5 Usborne’s Achievements and his Legacy

  Appendix I: Lighter-than-Air Flight Before the Advent of the Dirigible

  Appendix II: Airship Terms

  Appendix III: ‘Air Battles of the Future’

  Appendix IV: The Clément-Bayard Airship

  Appendix V: The Lebaudy Airship of 1910

  Appendix VI: The British Army – Early Heavier-than-Air Craft

  Appendix VII: The Origins of Fixed-wing Aviation in the Royal Navy

  Notes

  References

  Foreword

  Commander Neville Usborne was a career naval officer who entered the Royal Navy at a time of significant technological change. He was one of the first to appreciate the value of air reconnaissance for the fleet and, as a torpedo specialist with a practical knowledge of electrical and weapons systems, he was better placed than many seaman officers to become closely involved with the development of airships which were expected at first to have much greater utility than fixed-wing aeroplanes. He was appointed to the small team that stood by the first rigid airship, R1, unofficially known as the ‘Mayfly’, during her construction by Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness, and was selected to command her on her completion. Whilst at Barrow he designed and patented a clever system to capture the water vapour produced during the combustion process in the craft’s engines for use as ballast. In the event she was never completed and the Admiralty temporarily abandoned airships in favour of fixed-wing aircraft development, but this did not harm Usborne’s career.

  He was one of the outstanding personalities among the early aviation specialists, and a measure of the respect he earned can be drawn from his selection to become an associate fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society in February 1912, at the same time as Frederick Handley Page and Horace Short. He qualified to fly both heavier-than-air aircraft – awarded pilot’s certificate number 449 – as well as airships, and his drive and enthusiasm allowed him to continue at the forefront of development. Promoted to commander in January 1914, he was one of only six officers of that rank serving in the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) on its official formation on 1 July 1914 and was appointed to command the new Royal Naval Air Station at Kingsnorth in Kent, which was to be used as an operational, experimental and construction base for airships. From this new air station, Usborne flew some of the very first war patrols by RNAS airships in 1914, searching the eastern approaches to the English Channel in HM Airships 3 and 4 for signs of an enemy attack on shipping carrying the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to France. He never lost sight of the need to make the best use of the material the RNAS had available, but recognised the urgent requirement for technical innovation to overcome the immediate problems that faced the Navy’s air arm.

  Usborne was closely involved in the design evolution of the SS class non-rigid airships that proved to be very successful in coastal patrol work, an achievement recognised by his appointment as the Admiralty’s Inspecting Commander of Airships (Building) in August 1915. The RNAS had responsibility at the time for the air defence of the UK, since the whole of the Royal Flying Corps had been sent to France. However, fixed-wing aircraft proved unable to take off and climb fast enough to intercept Zeppelins over south-eastern England after they were detected, and nor could they maintain patrols at altitude for long against the possibility of an attack. The RNAS’ primary tactic was to attack the Zeppelins at source in their factories and sheds in Germany and Belgium, but something had to be done to intercept airships that penetrated UK airspace, and Usborne designed a remarkable solution, the airship-plane. This was a hybrid aircraft that comprised of a standard BE2C scout aircraft suspended beneath an SS-type airship in place of its control car. It could patrol for several hours at 4,000 feet and Usborne believed that the BE2C could be released with a realistic chance of attacking and destroying an enemy airship once it had been sighted. Unmanned release trials worked successfully with a prototype hybrid, and, on 21 February 1916, Usborne flew the first manned example, AP-1, with Squadron Commander W.P. de Courcy Ireland as co-pilot. As you will discover in the following pages, both men were killed when something went badly wrong, with the result that the RNAS lost an innovative and driving force who had played a not inconsiderable part in its early development.

  In this fascinating book, Guy Warner goes much further than simply recounting the biographical details of one individual, albeit a very remarkable one. He traces the development of lighter-than-air flight in the British armed forces from its very beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century in order to place Usborne’s career and achievements in their due context. Historians have often, hitherto, paid too little attention to the development of airships by the Royal Navy, and the important part they played in the First World War has been overshadowed by the exploits of heavier-than-air aircraft. Commander Usborne himself has not been given the degree of recognition he deser
ves, as one of the outstanding personalities in the first decade of naval aviation. This book redresses that imbalance, and is a worthy tribute to the memory of a brave and resourceful officer and his contemporaries.

  David Hobbs

  January 2016

  Introduction

  Our views on the viability of the airship are conditioned by images of the wreckage of the R101 on the hillside at Beauvais on 5 October 1930, and the Hindenburg in flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937. However, in the first decade of the twentieth century, the airship was just as exciting and promising a piece of advanced technology as the frail and unreliable, shortranged, heavier-than-air craft. Airships offered stability, endurance, range, payload and reasonable speed when compared to contemporary surface transport. Airships appealed to the Royal Navy as they offered a means of extending the eyes of the fleet above the oceans.

  A number of young and ambitious naval officers seized the opportunity to become involved with this new branch. Many served with distinction in the First World War and achieved high rank in the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force. One of these pioneers was recognised by his contemporaries as having an inventive mind, allied to a powerful and thrusting personality. According to the airship historian, the late Ces Mowthorpe, he was, ‘a brilliant and famous (in his time) airshipman.’ Owing to his untimely death at the age of only thirty-three, in 1916, he is all but forgotten. His name was Neville Usborne and this is his story, set within the context of the technological and strategic developments of his time in the British Isles and Europe, and also of the technical and social climate in which he grew up. In the course of this study, I hope to draw together and shed light on several important subject areas in which he was intimately involved:

  (a)

  How the RN had to adapt to and embrace new technology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, within a service ethos and training environment that still harked back to Nelson’s times.

  (b)

  How and why a bright, ambitious, technically minded young officer of the late-Victorian/Edwardian period could come to choose lighter-than-air aviation as a promising and fulfilling career path.

  (c)

  The general loss of confidence in Edwardian Britain as it faced the possibility that this new technology (which as well as aviation, included submarines, radio-telegraphy, torpedoes, Dreadnought Class battleships, optical fire control and the introduction of oil fuel to replace coal) would erode the comfortable and complacent feeling of security from continental disturbances which had existed since the time of George IV.

  (d)

  The very real and important debate in the early twentieth century between the comparative merits of lighter-than-air (balloons and airships) and heavier-than-air aviation (aeroplanes). How the role and organisation of a military air service was defined from the Royal Engineers Balloon School, to the RE Air Battalion, the RN Airships Branch, the RFC, and eventually the RAF.

  (e)

  The political, public, press and military perceptions of the above.

  (f)

  The differing strands of lighter-than-air flight – rigid airships as favoured in Germany, semi-rigid as the French preferred, non-rigid, which came to be the British speciality, balloons, kites and kite balloons. Which would prove to be of the greatest utility in the war, the advent of which was greatly feared in the first decade or so of the twentieth century?

  (g)

  The particular involvement of Neville Usborne in the construction of the first British rigid airship, pre-war pioneering with small non-rigid airships – which would directly result in the design and construction of the two most successful and widely used classes of non-rigid airship – and the ultimately unsuccessful effort to develop a hybrid aircraft as a means of anti-Zeppelin countermeasures.

  (h)

  Putting Usborne’s story, and all of the above, within the overall framework and context of an examination of the military experience of lighter-than-air flight in Britain between 1878 and 1930, with attention also being paid to parallel developments in Europe and the USA during this period. Annexes sketch out the place of all of this within the history of lighter-than-air aviation from 1783, through the search for motive power and dirigibility in the nineteenth century, and also show briefly how airships found a niche in the Second World War and the Cold War.

  The several classes of non-rigid airships operated by the Royal Naval Air Service during the First World War may, with some justification, be regarded as some of the most successful types of dirigible ever built. This did not come about by accident, and was based on over thirty years’ experience accumulated by the British Army and the Royal Navy, and which progress Neville Usborne, among several others described in the text, played a significant role. No previous work has put all this together and no account has ever been given of the life story of this Anglo-Irish airman.

  My very grateful thanks are due to the following for their very valuable help: Sara Bevan, Anne Boddaert, Den Burchmore, Nigel Caley, Michael Clarke, Ernie Cromie, Allen Crosbie, Peter Devitt, Richard Forrest, Sam Gresham, Dr Jane Harrold, Commander David Hobbs, Sue Kilbracken, Christopher Kilbracken, Diana King, Stuart Leslie, Tom McCarthy, Sara Mackeown, Phil Maguire, George Malcolmson, John Montgomery, Philip Moody, Betty Moss, Ces Mowthorpe, Tim Pierce, Dr Ian Speller, Nick Stroud, Julian Usborne, Doreen Warner, Beverley Williams, Christine Woodward and Sam Wynn. BRNC Dartmouth, Crawford Art Gallery, Imperial War Museum, History Department NUI Maynooth, National Aerospace Library, National Library of New Zealand, National Physical Laboratory, Port of Cork, RAeS, Royal Aero Club, RAF Cranwell, RAF Museum, Royal Engineers Museum, RN Submarine Museum, RUSI.

  Finally, sincere thanks to my editor Ken Patterson and to all the staff at Pen and Sword, especially Charles Hewitt, Lori Jones, Laura Hirst, Laura Lawton and Matthew Blurton.

  Except where stated, photographs are from the author’s collection.

  Chapter One

  From the 1850s to the 1890s

  Family Background

  Neville Florian Usborne was born on 27 February 1883, in Queenstown (now Cobh), in Co Cork, on the south-eastern coast of Ireland, the son of Captain George Usborne, RN, and his wife, Josephine Scott, whom he married in Queenstown in 1875 and who was the daughter of a wealthy local shipping merchant, Philip Scott (1808–1879) [Philip Scott’s father had founded James Scott and Co. of Cove in 1835. The family would be synonymous with shipping in Cork for more than 100 years. Philip, in his role as one of two town commissioners, presented the Address of Welcome to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1849, and also requested the change of name from Cove to Queenstown. His son, James William, was a Cork Harbour Commissioner for forty years]. George was born in 1845 and entered the Royal Navy in 1860. He became a sublieutenant in 1865 and full lieutenant in 1867. He was appointed to the battleship HMS Zealous, a broadside armed, wooden hulled, ironclad, screw vessel serving as a flagship in the Pacific. In 1871 he was made flag-lieutenant in HMS Revenge (launched in 1859, a wooden hull, two-deck, second-rate of ninety-one guns, renamed Empress in 1890) at Queenstown, where it was the flagship of Rear Admiral Edmund Heathcote, the Port Admiral. George received a ‘haul-down’ promotion to commander in 1874. After studying at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, he became Inspecting Officer of Coastguard at Moville, Co Donegal, in 1877 and later at Folkestone in Kent. It was there that he received the thanks of the German Emperor, together with a Berlin vase bearing the Emperor’s portrait, for his assistance during the loss of a German ironclad warship.

  This view of the waterfront at Queenstown (now Cobh) is dominated by St Colman’s Cathedral, construction of which began in 1868. (Via Allen Crosbie)

  Developments in Lighter-than-air aviation

  As George approached his mid-30s there had already been several important developments in aviation during his lifetime. In July 1849, the Austrian steamship Vulcano had launched several hot-air balloons in an unsuccessful attempt to drop high explosive on the city of Venice,
during the siege of the city.1 On 24 September 1852, the first manned flight in a mechanically-driven aircraft took place – 17 miles (27 km) at 6mph (9.6kph) – by the French engineer, Henri Giffard (1825–1882), who was also the inventor of the steam injector, in a 3hp (2.22kW) steam-powered dirigible – the engine, coke, boiler and water weighed 900lbs (408kg) – driving an airscrew with a diameter of 11 feet (3.35 metres). It was 144 feet (43.89 metres) in length, with a maximum diameter of 39 feet (11.84 metres) and had a capacity of 88,000 cubic feet (2500 cubic metres). The envelope, which was filled with coal-gas, was elongated, symmetrical, and with pointed ends. The car containing the engine and aeronaut was suspended some 20 feet (6 metres) below the gasbag, the stokehole of the boiler was screened with wire gauze, and the engine was inverted so that the exhaust products were directed away from the inflammable material above. He had been inspired and assisted with his design by the ideas and sketches of Lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Marie Meusnier of 1783 and Sir George Cayley in 1817.

  Giffard’s Airship, which made its historic flight in 1852.

  Meusnier’s design of 1784 for a dirigible was sound, he simply lacked a suitable source of motive power.

  Cayley’s plans for a dirigible.

  Meusnier’s design for a non-rigid airship anticipated many of the most important principles and featured ballonets (airbags mounted inside the gasbag to help keep it in shape and to maintain the internal pressure), rigging to suspend the car and an elongated shape – but he knew of no suitable power source. Cayley’s design was similar and planned to use a steam engine to drive propellers or moveable wings. Giffard described his experience thus:

  ‘I took off from the Hippodrome at a quarter past five. The wind was blowing fairly strongly. Not for a single moment did I dream of struggling directly against the wind, the power of the engine would not have permitted it; that had been thought of in advance and proved by calculations; but I carried out various manoeuvres of circular and lateral movement, successfully. The influence of the rudder could be felt immediately and I hardly had to pull lightly on one of the two steering lines before I saw the horizon move around me.’2