The performance of German airships during the war, and the double crossing of the Atlantic by the airship R34 in 1919, sufficiently impressed the Air Ministry that it embarked on a British airship programme which produced R38 and R80. The Ministry was undoubtedly deterred by the appalling R38 disaster in 1921 but, presumably as a result of Professor Bairstow’s demonstration of the inexcusable inadequacy of the R38 design, they did not abandon their plans. After all R80, to the design of B.N. Wallis, the great engineer who became famous as Sir Barnes Wallis after the 1939-45 war, had been a success.

So in 1924 the Air Ministry decided to order two airships, each of five million cubic feet capacity. One, to be called R100, was ordered from the Airship Guarantee Company, a Vickers subsidiary headed by Sir Denniston Burney. It was to be built at Howden. The other, to be called R101, was to be built by the Air Ministry itself, at the Royal Airship Works, Cardington. At the head of the Burney design team was B.N. Wallis. At the head of the Air Ministry design team was V.C. Richmond.