Howden
HOWDEN: Airship Station and Landing Ground
Note: This picture was obtained from Google Earth ©
Military users: WW1: RFC/RNAS/RAF
RFC 33 [Home Defence; Sqdn 1916 (Probably in that period, Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2s & F.E.2s?)
RNAS/RAF Class G Airship Station for non-rigid airships (1916 to 1919)
RNAS/RAF Airship Station for rigid airships (1916 to 1921)
Manufacturing: Pre 1940: Airship Guarantee Company (A subsidary of Vickers)
Location: 2nm N of Howden, or so it appears
Period of operation: 1916 to 1929?
Site area: 1240 acres 2835 x 2377
NOTES: Commissioned as a RNAS Air Station 15th March 1916. Transferred to the RAF 1st April 1918. Last used 20th September 1921 as a military aerodrome?
I have also come across an intriguing reference to HOWDEN being used by the US Douglas World Cruiser team in 1924. Landing here, (called “the Vickers Airfield”), from CROYDON to have floats fitted to cross the north Atlantic. Pretty obviously a nonsense in this respect, but did they route to KIRKWALL via HOWDEN?
THE R.100
On the 16th December 1929 the airship R100, (G-FAAV), made its first flight from HOWDEN and then flew to CARDINGTON in BEDFORDSHIRE. It appears that the R.100 was privately financed, (others disagree saying it was government financed) and a fine airship whereas the R.101, (which was far from satisfactory), was a government project and the politics of that time demanded that R.101 had to take precedence, despite not having had its flight trials completed.
And in many ways a sheer folly at various high government levels, sealed it’s fate. I believe the captain and crew should now be exempt from any blame. However, the disastrous first voyage of the R.101 led to the cancellation of British giant airship operations after it crashed at Beauvais in France on it’s maiden flight to India.
The history of British aviation is of course beset by similar sorry tales whereby the premature fate of many fine aircraft designs suffered from the hands of interfering politicians whose motives when looked back upon today raise many questions about where their actual loyalty lay!
A RECOMMENDATION
I would thoroughly recommend anybody interested in British airship history to do some serious research and reading about the series of events leading up to the R.101 disaster. It was situations such as this which surely eventually led to the common consensus that ultimately the Captain of an aircraft has to have total authority in deciding exactly what to do to safeguard the flight. Regarding the R.101 the captain felt he was being 'steam-rollered' into having to accept decisions made at the highest levels in government. Much against his better judgement.
Mr Kenneth Rusby
This comment was written on: 2019-03-25 22:39:10I read all about this saga in Neville Shute's autobiography "Slide Rule" when I was a student in the 1960's. An excellent account of the building of the R100 and the whole appalling saga of the incompetence / politics that crashed the R101 and the entire UK airship programme. Not many people know that Shute, as a well known novelist, had a "day job" as Barnes Wallis head mathematician on the R100 project, and after that as CEO of the Airspeed Co. I thoroughly recommend this book.
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