Barnes Wallace had previously designed the R100 [1] airship for Vickers - the one that didn't crash. The one that did crash was an RAF project. The govt. was ha

Barnes Wallace had previously designed the R100 [1] airship for Vickers - the one that didn't crash. The one that did crash was an RAF project. The govt. was having a competition to see which design would be best. The R100 flew to Canada and back without incident, setting various records on the way. The fatal R101 flight to India was insisted on by the Air Ministry in response. A deadly effect of "ship it when we say" rather than "ship it when it's ready" One interesting fact from the R100 story : the stress calculations of their airframe were obviously done by hand and took 3 months to complete, something one could do in Excel nowadays, even without CAD. The figures are almost unimaginable : Wallis finally settled on the use of six reconditioned Rolls-Royce Condor petrol engines for propulsion. [2] Each of which generated 500 hp (373 Kw) and weighed 1,504 lbs (682 kg). From wikipedia : Nevil Shute later suggested in Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer that the success of R100's Canadian flight indirectly led to the R101 disaster. Prior to the transatlantic flight, the Cardington team could suggest that neither airship was ready for a performance of such duration. However, when R100 returned in triumph they had to either make the flight to India or admit defeat – which would have meant discredit with the consequent danger of losing their jobs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R100 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Condor