NAVAL AIRSHIP.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 8, 4 July 1911, Page 6

NAVAL AIRSHIP.

FOR WATER AND AIR. London, May 6. It is announced that his Majesty's naval airship No. 1, now lying completed at Messrs Vickers' factory at Barrow, will make a trial ascent upon the first calm day. The airship is of the rigid type and is shaped like a thick pencil tapering to a bluntish point at the bow and to a sharper point at the stern. As she is intended for sea flights rather than work overland, she has been fitted with mechanism to enable her to rise from, alight on, and move about on the surface of the water. The following technical information regarding the vessel is given:—Length, 510 ft; maximum diameter, 48ft; volume, TO«,3»0 cubic teet; lifting power, 21 tons; motors, two eight-cylinder 100-200-h.p.;' speed, 45 miles per hour; propellers, three, one large one to after motor in roar of gondola, two smaller ones on out-riggers, one on each side of the forward gondola; steering—(l) Elevators, (a) a tri-plane set on each side under the bow, (1>) a biplane set on each side abaft the horizontal fins; (2) vertical rudders—two triplan sets, one above and one below the stern.

The rigid framework of the airship consists of a network of a recently Invented alloy of aluminium known as duralumin. The outer envelope is made of specially woven silk which is treated with a secret preparation called ioeo in order to lessen the leakage of hvdro«en from the seventeen balloonets. " °

The upper half of the net envelope is silver grey in color, while the lower half is of a yellow hue. It is claimed that this arrangement will diminish undue expansion or contraction of the hydrogen contained in the balloonets. From the duralumin framework hang rods of the same substance, and to these are attached the gondolas and the cabin. The gondolas, which are suspended near the bow and the stern, are made of wood. The cabin for the accommodation of the officers and crew hangs amidships. The Wolseley motors are placed one in each gondola. Sufficient petrol can be carried to enable the airship to make a voyage of several days. Naval officers and bluejackets will man the new airship, and it is proposed to make tlieir uniforms of silk, which will be specially treated with ioco to render them H'indproof. After she is launched the airship will be used as a training vessel for the crews that will be called upon to man the larger naval airships to oe built in the future.