The Worshipful Company of Coachmakers & Coach Harness Makers of London

Some of you will remember the R101 and R100. These were two airships, one sponsored and designed by the Government (R101), the other sponsored by the Government, but designed and built by private enterprise (R100). It was an initiative in1929 as part of a British government programme to develop civil airships capable of service on long-distance routes within the British Empire.

R101 was the result of a British government initiative to develop airships to provide passenger and mail transport from the UK to the most distant parts of the British Empire. The distances were too great for conventional aircraft of the period. The 1922 scheme had proposed a civil airship development programme carried out by a specially established subsidiary of Vickers with the support of the British government. This called for the building of two experimental airships: one, R101, to be designed and constructed under direction of the Air Ministry, and the other, R100 to be built by Vickers’s Airship Guarantee Company under a fixed price contract (hence the nicknames “the Socialist Airship” and the “Capitalist Airship”).

In addition to the building of the two airships, the scheme involved the establishment of the necessary infrastructure for airship operations; for example, the mooring masts used at Cardington, Ismalia, Karachi and Montreal had to be designed and built and the meteorological forecasting network extended and improved.

Specifications for the airships were drawn up by an Air Ministry committee whose members included Squadron Leader Reginald Colmore and Lieutenant-Colonel Vincent Richmond, both of whom had extensive experience with airships, principally non rigid ones. These called for airships of not less than five million cubic feet (140,000 m³) capacity and a fixed structural weight not to exceed 90 tons, giving a “disposable lift” of nearly 62 tons. With the necessary allowance of about 20 tons for the service load consisting of a crew of approximately 40, stores, and water ballast this meant a possible fuel and passenger load of 42 tons. Accommodation for 100 passengers and tankage for 57 hours’ flight was to be provided and a sustainable cruise speed of 63 mph (101 km/h) and maximum speed of 70 mph (110 km/h) was called for. In wartime, the airships would be expected to carry 200 troops, or alternatively five fighter aircraft.

Vickers’s design team was led by Barnes Wallis, who had extensive experience of rigid airship design and later became famous for the bouncing bomb. As a principal assistant (the “Chief Calculator”), Nevil Shute Norway, later well known as a novelist. Shute characterises R100 as a pragmatic and conservative design, and R101 as extravagant and over-ambitious. One purpose of having two design teams was to test different approaches, with R101 deliberately intended to extend the limits of existing technology.

Sadly, it all went terribly wrong as in 1930 on 5th October, the R101 crashed in France, Beauvais. The project was immediately halted and no further development took place.

Hybrid Air Vehicles have resurrected the technology and given it a major overhaul and have developed a most exciting new approach to transport. Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd. is an England-based designer of air vehicles known as hybrid airships. These vehicles, such as the prototype HAV – 3, utilize both aerodynamics and lighter-than-air technology to generate lift, potentially allowing the vehicle to stay aloft for a few weeks.

To produce the design, the company has partnered with Northrop Grumman in a $500 million contract.

In August 2011, HAV signed a provisional deal with Discovery Air Innovations to sell the hybrids for use in Northern Canada. The deal, which the companies hope to have finalised by 2012, could involve up to 45 airships at $40 million per craft, with the first being delivered in 2014.

To learn more about this innovative development then click HERE

To learn more about the potential of this unique form of transport then click the HAV web site by
clicking HERE

The view from the City by James Carey

As we say goodbye to another year this is one few of us will forget in a hurry, especially those of us that have dealings in the financial markets. As we began 2008 the wholesale credit markets were all ready in a state of chaos, with severe losses accumulated in the second half of 2007 for credit investors, the stagnation of the overnight lending market LIBOR and the first run on a bank in over 150 years in the UK. Few outside of the wholesale credit market could have predicted how much further the credit crisis would have left to run and its implications on the real economy.

With losses accumulating on credit products, including loans, mortgages, corporate bonds and derivatives, the banking sector is now estimated to have taken 1 trillion USD of writedowns on its accounts. With no sign of losses abating on hard to shift positions, we can only expect banks’ capital positions to be further imperilled in 2009. Clearly this will continue to make access to credit far harder in 2009 as banks are unable to write much new business.

In 2008, we saw various business models challenged as those relying on borrowing found it hard to refinance or take out additional facilities. Whilst more levered businesses have run into trouble earlier, even those with more modest borrowings are now being forced to use cashflows to repay borrowings rather than finance expansion. All this, coupled with a heavily indebted consumer serves to explain the current recession we now face at the end of 2008.

Globally, the industry most in the headlines other than the banking sector has been that of the autos. Following much public debate in the USA, a wholesale bailout or nationalisation of GM and Ford seemed to be off the cards. However, a last minute reprieve of short term loans was granted by the US President to stave off imminent cash flow problems. On the face of it, this will give the companies time to restructure and cut costs before March and present a cogent plan on how to progress. But this masks the true underlying problems. Both companies have been plagued with difficulties since 2005. Both are operating in the mature North American market where in recent years lower cost, higher efficiency foreign operators have been steadily taking market share. As oil prices surged this year, the model of supplying large engine, gas guzzler brands with more focus on power than efficiency seemed woefully out of date. The net result has been a protracted decline in market share over many years. Not to mention both companies have significant non operating financial overheads such as pension obligations and retiree benefits and a unionised work force that finds the idea of wage cuts unpalatable.

If the credit crunch has done anything, it has only exposed business models that were somewhat unviable going into the crisis without readily available cheap funding. The question is whether tax payers should now be asked to bailout private corporations. One school of thought in the US suggests that a Chapter 11 would allow the companies far more flexibility to shed staff, retool and reprioritise to emerge healthier and aligned with the real demand of their customer base. Continuing to fund what appears to be a broken business model without being able to expedite change seems like a potential money pit.

The question of our American colleagues seems very pertinent as the Government considers bailing out our own UK car industry. Recent talk of loans to UK carmakers to help temporarily weather the lack of commercially available credit will provide a much welcome fillip to those wondering how to bridge their finances. The question is however to what extent as a society do we want to bail out companies and protect jobs at the expense of the public purse. Given record Government deficits and high personal borrowing (some figures suggest a total UK debt load of 4 trillion pounds, an eye popping 200,000 pounds per household*), clearly transferring debt obligations of the private sector to the public will only further exacerbate the problems in our nations finances.

Whilst unarguably, propping up a sound business with a definite profitable future that finds itself temporarily unable to source funds is inevitably a good proposition. What we must avoid however is a slippery slide into a return to the nationalisation of the automotive and other industries. With a highly indebted consumer and lack of finance available, we can expect new car demand to remain anaemic in the interim. To survive this crisis longer term, we will need to realign our product offering with the customer base rather than rely on a longer term Government driven solution. Perhaps this will come from the inevitable rise in eco friendly motoring, fuel cell technology, hybrids or electric cars. Either way, we need to look for the next boom in the transport industry and position ourselves for it. What is clear is that the recent fashion for high energy consumption, luxury high-end transport is over for now, whether we like it or not.

*Figure quoted in Robert Peston’s Blog, the new Capitalism, 16th December 2008 and represents an estimate of total Government borrowing, total UK corporate borrowing and total consumer borrowing.