Cardington Number 2 Shed At Raf Cardington

Airship hangar built in 1928 by the Cleveland Bridge Company of Darlington. The shed was constructed to house the R100 airship, which had been built by the Airship Guarantee Company at Howden and arrived at Cardington in December 1929. It is an enlarged version of a hangar originally built at Pulham in Norfolk in 1916 for coastal airships, which was transferred to Cardington in 1928.

The building measures 812 feet long by 275 feet wide by 180 feet high. Its structure comprises 29 bays of steel framing with double side aisles used as workshop annexes and a huge central nave. The entire structure is clad in corrugated steel sheeting. Enormous doors at the west end open to the full height and width of the nave and are moved by electric motors.

This is one of only three airship hangars in Britain to have survived from the period up to 1918. It was resited and extended in 1928 to construct and house the Vickers-designed R100 airship. Together with Number One Shed, it forms a uniquely important testament to airship technology and its political context in Europe.

Airship development in Britain began in 1879 when the Royal Engineers formed a Balloon Equipment Store at Woolwich Arsenal, which was subsequently moved to Chatham in 1882 and then to Aldershot in 1890. The Balloon School was established in April 1906, the same year the army's first airship shed was constructed at the Balloon School's new factory at Farnborough (since demolished). Two further airship sheds were erected in 1910-11, later moved to Kingsnorth and demolished around 1930. By November 1918, the country's total of airship sheds had increased to 61, reflecting the strategic importance the Admiralty attached to airships as a deterrent to U-boat operations in Home Waters.

From 1926 onwards, works on this site resulted from government authorisation of projects for the R100 and R101 airships, which were to be used for an Empire-wide travel service. Number One Shed, the only surviving example of an airship shed built in situ from the period up to 1918, was originally constructed for the Admiralty as a 700-foot hangar for the R31 and R32 airships. It was enlarged to 812 feet and heightened by 35 feet to accommodate the R101 in 1926-27.

After the R101 disaster in October 1930, when the airship crashed on its maiden voyage to India with the loss of 48 lives including Sir Sefton Branker, Secretary of State for Air, the British government terminated its support for the airship programme due to economic pressure. The R100, which had made a successful return flight to Canada, was broken up inside Number One Shed and sold for scrap in 1931. Cardington's fortunes revived after the formation of Balloon Command in November 1938, when it became the RAF's principal barrage balloon operations training centre.