Walney Island
NOTE: See also BARROW-in-FURNESS Flying Sites entries for more information as a lot of this area doubles up.
Note: This picture was obtained from Google Earth ©
WALNEY ISLAND: Airship assembly shed and base, also Military Airship Station.
(Later WW2 military aerodrome see BARROW)
(Also known as RNAS WALNEY ISLAND (?) and later as HMAS WALNEY ISLAND)
Note: All three of these pictures were obtained from Google Earth ©
NOTE: The site of airship assembly and the aerodrome are on different sites.
Flying Club: Furness Aero Club
Note: I found a listing for the Furness Aero Club in the 1957 The Aeroplane directory. But, unlike most other listings, the types of aircraft listed are not specified. Could anybody kindly offer advice?
Gliding: Lakes Gliding Club
Note: It appears the Lakes Gliding Club was established here in the 1930s, (possibly even earlier?), and when requisitioned in WW2 were moved to nearby CARK to form 188 Gliding School for the Air Training Corps.
After WW2, (but when?), the Club moved back to WALNEY and, judging from their web-site which I viewed in 2016, are still going strong.
Operated by: Principally the RNAS with Vickers involvement?
1965: Vickers Ltd
1990: Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd
Location: See BARROW, the site of the airship shed is now covered by an adjacent post-war housing estate
Period of operation: 1914 to 1921 only? Then reactivated for WW2. Since then always in operation?
Site area: WW1: 325 acres 1582 x 1084
Note: These maps are reproduced with the kind permission of Pooleys Flight Equipment Ltd. Copyright Robert Pooley 2014.
Runways: WW2: 12/30 1189x46 hard 18/36 1006x46 hard
06/24 1006x46 hard
1965: 12/30 1018x46 hard 12/30 1196x46 hard
1990: 12/30 1205x46 hard 17/35 1014x46 hard
06/24 1048x46 hard
2000: 17/35 1014x46 hard 06/24 1048x46 hard
NOTES: The Vickers R.80 was the last airship built here in WW1 and today it’s hard to imagine how very large and complex they were and the engineering involved, so here are a few dreaded statistics. Over 600 drawings were made and they contained 1.6 million individual parts. 20 miles of Duralumin channel and angle sections were ‘stayed’ by 53 miles of wire and it took 30,000 sq yards, (25,083 sq metres), to cover the envelope!
The designer was Barnes Wallis who designed the geodetic construction used in the Vickers Wellington bomber for example and who is possibly most famous today for the ‘bouncing bomb’ used in the WW2 raids by the ‘Dam Busters’. He also designed the ‘Tallboy’ and ‘Grand Slam’ bombs. A most dedicated and imaginative designer I would suggest his achievements with the R.80 airship and geodetic airframe concept deserve much more accolade today, rather than being mainly remembered for a few novel bomb designs. Not because the R.80 was a fine example of good airship design, (it wasn’t as first because it was weak), but given the almost experimental constraints he was working within at that time, a nevertheless substantial achievement in design and engineering.
He did later design the R.100 which flew to Canada and back but this was most unreasonably scrapped following the R.101 disaster at Beauvais in France which was not due to any inherent fault in that airship design as such, but due to overiding pressures brought about by incredibly stupid decisions made by utterly arrogant/ignorant ‘top brass’ personalities/politicians.
steven leigh
This comment was written on: 2020-04-29 22:00:47just trying to research my grandfathers raf records and he qualified as an air gunner at walney island in 1942
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