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Speaker 1: Pushkin. As the night draws in and the fire blazes

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Speaker 1: on the hearth. We warn the children by telling them stories.

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Speaker 1: The three Little Pigs warns them always to use solid

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Speaker 1: construction materials. But my stories are for the education of

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Speaker 1: the grown ups, and my stories are all true. I'm

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Speaker 1: Tim Harford. Gather close and listen to my cautionary tale.

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Speaker 1: It was just before lunchtime on the fourteenth of October

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine when Christopher Birdward Thompson stood up from

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Speaker 1: his desk, donned his stiff Homburg hat, adding a little

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Speaker 1: more to his imposing height of six feet five inches,

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Speaker 1: and walked briskly up the stairs to the roof terrace.

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Speaker 1: Lord Thompson worked on Whitehall, the street at the heart

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Speaker 1: of the British government. To his left, Downing Street, the

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Speaker 1: official residence of the Prime Minister. To his right the

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Speaker 1: Houses of Parliament. But he wasn't looking left or right

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Speaker 1: like everyone else in London that day. He was looking

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Speaker 1: straight up. Cruising low over Whitehall. Was the largest aircraft

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Speaker 1: the world had ever seen. It was a long, slim,

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Speaker 1: silver tear drop an airship. It was enormous, seven hundred

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Speaker 1: and thirty five feet long. The size of a large

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Speaker 1: man hat and skyscraper lying on its side, hovering right

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Speaker 1: over their heads. It was a glimpse Lord Thompson liked

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Speaker 1: to say of the future. The vast airship had slowed

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Speaker 1: to a leisurely forty miles an hour to allow the

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Speaker 1: crowd a better view. People gathered on the Thames embankment.

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Speaker 1: The Prince of Wales, the future King Edward the Eighth,

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Speaker 1: flew his biplane up to take a look. He would

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Speaker 1: have been able to read, in clear black letters near

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Speaker 1: the airship's nose its utilitarian name R one oh one.

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Speaker 1: It must have been quite a moment for Lord Thompson.

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Speaker 1: Lord Thompson was the British Secretary of State for Air

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Speaker 1: and if not for his bold ideas, this remarkable ship

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Speaker 1: would never have existed. I do very often have a

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Speaker 1: sort of vision as to what aviation will be in

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Speaker 1: the future, and I can foresee the time when noble

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Speaker 1: lords will travel in gliders with light engines, winging their

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Speaker 1: way westward along the Valley of the Thames, northward to

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Speaker 1: Scotland and southwards to Hampshire, Berkshire and Kent. On their

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Speaker 1: way they will need to rest. Perhaps they may call

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Speaker 1: in at one of these giant airships, floating, serene and safe,

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Speaker 1: high up and far removed from terrestrial dirt and noise.

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Speaker 1: It was a vision indeed. The R one oh one, accordingly,

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Speaker 1: was designed as a luxurious floating hotel, a hotel that

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Speaker 1: would swiftly carry men like Lord Thompson to the furthest

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Speaker 1: corners of the British Empire. But the R one oh

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Speaker 1: one had a rival. When he commissioned the R one

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Speaker 1: oh one, Lord Thompson had proposed a competition between two

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Speaker 1: teams of airship designers. A private company, Vickers, would build

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Speaker 1: the R one hundred. Lord Thompson's Air Ministry would design

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Speaker 1: and build its own ship, the R one oh one.

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Speaker 1: The Air Ministry, of course, would be the one to

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Speaker 1: adjudicate which of the two airships was best. Lord Thompson

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Speaker 1: had argued his case in a cabinet meeting. These arrangements

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Speaker 1: will promote a spirit of friendly emulation. Come off it.

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Speaker 1: What you mean is bloody competition. That competition came to

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Speaker 1: represent more than a clash between two teams. Rather absurdly,

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Speaker 1: it came to symbolize a struggle for supremacy between the

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Speaker 1: two contrasting economic systems. The press quickly caught on to

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Speaker 1: the idea of this contest, dubbing the R one hundred

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Speaker 1: the Capitalist Airship and the R one oh one the

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Speaker 1: Socialist Airship. Lord Thompson affectionately called them my children, although

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Speaker 1: he certainly had a favorite child. He once said, the

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Speaker 1: R one hundred brought me pleasure. I hope that the

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Speaker 1: R one oh one will bring me joy, But the

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Speaker 1: sibling rivalry would be less than friendly. In fact, it

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Speaker 1: would be deadly. We are sometimes told that competition is good.

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Speaker 1: It raises everyone's game, it brings out the best in us.

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Speaker 1: But sometimes competition leads to tragedy. You're listening to another

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Speaker 1: cautionary tale. Wind the clock back a few years and

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Speaker 1: put yourselves in the shoes of the team building the

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Speaker 1: R one hundred the Capitalist Airship. The R one hundred

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Speaker 1: crew were resentful. They had a tight budget and were

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Speaker 1: being judged against a competitor with every advantage. Their rivals

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Speaker 1: had more money and better facilities to build the R

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Speaker 1: one oh one at the Royal Airship Works just north

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Speaker 1: of London, But they were also the ones judging the contest,

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Speaker 1: player and referee all at once. The Capitalist R one

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Speaker 1: hundred was built in Howden, Yorkshire. It was the far

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Speaker 1: end of the country from the seat of power in London.

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Speaker 1: The old airship shed there was in poor repair. It

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Speaker 1: was bitingly cold in winter, and the corrugated iron roof

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Speaker 1: leaked all year round. The airship framework was eaten away

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Speaker 1: by corrosion. The paper thin cotton covers grew mold. The

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Speaker 1: gas bags themselves were glued together from over a million

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Speaker 1: cow intestines, the only material that was strong and light

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Speaker 1: enough to contain the ever elusive gas hydrogen. Beneath the

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Speaker 1: space age curves of these great silvery vessels lurked the

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Speaker 1: viscera of some vast mammalian collective. The smell of the

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Speaker 1: cowgut was everywhere, and the rats loved to gnaw at

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Speaker 1: the gas bags. And there was another problem. The Government

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Speaker 1: Air Ministry refused to build a mooring mast at Howden.

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Speaker 1: That might sound like a minor matter, but it meant

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Speaker 1: that the only safe place to park both airships was

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Speaker 1: at the Air Ministry's Royal Airship Works down near London.

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Speaker 1: Once the capitalist Are one hundred had been completed, it

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Speaker 1: would fly down to the Grand Tower at the Royal

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Speaker 1: Airship works where it's better funded, better connected rivals would

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Speaker 1: sit in judgment and its designers might never see it again.

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Speaker 1: The Howden team began to wander whether after completing their task,

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Speaker 1: they would ever get to build another airship. The Capitalist

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Speaker 1: R one hundred team did have one advantage. The chief

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Speaker 1: designer was a genius. Barnes Wallace had designed several airship before,

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Speaker 1: and he would in time become famous for designing a

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Speaker 1: bouncing bomb that could skim like a stone over the

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Speaker 1: surface of a reservoir, destroying German dams in the Second

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Speaker 1: World War. But all that was to come later. As

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Speaker 1: the icicles formed inside the shed at Howden, he was exhausted.

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Speaker 1: The schedule was brutal, and the Capitalist Airship team seriously understaffed.

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Speaker 1: Barnes's wife, Molly complained in our poor little hangar, Barnes

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Speaker 1: works laid writing answers to idiotic people who don't know

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Speaker 1: one end of an airship from the other. Meanwhile, the

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Speaker 1: rival team, with their generous government funding, had dozens of

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Speaker 1: people to deal with bureaucratic chores. Still, as I said,

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Speaker 1: Barnes Wallace was a genius and he needed to be.

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Speaker 1: Building an airship is a difficult task. Both the R

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Speaker 1: one hundred and the R one oh one were to

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Speaker 1: have a rigid skeleton to support the engines, cockpits, and

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Speaker 1: passenger cabin while traveling at seventy miles an hour. The

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Speaker 1: airships needed covers that could withstand the perishing rays of

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Speaker 1: the sun, the laceration of the rain, and the tugging

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Speaker 1: and heaving of the wind. The whole thing would be

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Speaker 1: wrapped around a series of those vast intestinal gas bags

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Speaker 1: containing several million cubic feet of extremely flammable hydrogen, and

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Speaker 1: yet everything needed to be ethereally thin and light. These

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Speaker 1: challenges existed for any airship, but the R one hundred

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Speaker 1: and R one oh one were attempting to solve them

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Speaker 1: at a larger scale than any previous craft. The competition

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Speaker 1: required that the Socialist R one oh one was to

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Speaker 1: fly from London to British India in four days, a

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Speaker 1: journey that would take fifteen days by ship and even

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Speaker 1: longer in a plane that would incessantly be making risky

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Speaker 1: landings to refuel. The list. R one hundred was to

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Speaker 1: fly from London to Canada and back. In the nineteen twenties,

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Speaker 1: these long haul missions were the equivalent of putting a

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Speaker 1: man on the moon. Barnes Wallace was probably the best

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Speaker 1: man in the country to lead such a moonshot, so

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Speaker 1: naturally the team from the well funded Government airship sent

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Speaker 1: their designs up to Wallace to get his views, you know,

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Speaker 1: the spirit of friendly emulation and all that. But as

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Speaker 1: sleep deprived, overworked, Wallace sat reviewing the plans of his rivals.

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Speaker 1: He didn't really feel like helping. He didn't respect his

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Speaker 1: opposite number. He's a mere works manager, not a technologist

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Speaker 1: in any sense of the word, and he knew that

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Speaker 1: the game was rigged. Why should Barnes Wallace offer any

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Speaker 1: insight into the problems of his rivals. It is the

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Speaker 1: crudest piece of design which I have ever seen. He

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Speaker 1: sent the blueprint for the R one oh one, the

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Speaker 1: Socialist Airship back to the Royal Airship Works with a

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Speaker 1: frosty note, offering no suggestions until it has been shown unsatisfactory.

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Speaker 1: I prefer the arrangement we have worked out for R

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Speaker 1: one hundred. Then among the rats. He returned to his

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Speaker 1: thankless task in the cold Chad at Howden. There's nothing

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Speaker 1: inherently wrong with competition. It stops us being lazy, and

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Speaker 1: it allows us to experiment with different approaches. Competitors can

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Speaker 1: learn from each other and copy what works. So competition

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Speaker 1: is a good thing, but you can have too much

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Speaker 1: of a good thing. Faced with extreme competition, we may

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Speaker 1: do all sorts of things we wouldn't have done in

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Speaker 1: a gentler contest. We rush, things, we crack under the stress.

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Speaker 1: We cheat. Some economists have long been aware of this problem.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety eight, two of them, Robert Drago and

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Speaker 1: Gerald Garvey, studied a large variety of workplaces, distinguishing those

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Speaker 1: places that used high stakes promotion schemes and those that didn't.

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Speaker 1: Managers in the high stakes workplaces ran their organizations like

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Speaker 1: a tournament. Junior staff who produced the best performance would

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Speaker 1: be rewarded with a promotion, more money, more status, better conditions.

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Speaker 1: Everyone else would miss out classic high stakes competition. These

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Speaker 1: competitions did make people work hard, but the problem was

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Speaker 1: that workers also stopped helping each other. They wouldn't give

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Speaker 1: advice or lend each other tools. Why should they? The

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Speaker 1: promotion tournament had turned the workplace into a cutthroat competition.

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Speaker 1: If you helped a colleague, you were helping a rival.

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Speaker 1: You were sabotaging your own chances of success. Draco and

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Speaker 1: Garvey's work perfectly described the psychology of the UK's Great

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Speaker 1: Airship competition. It was clear to the capitalist Are one

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Speaker 1: hundred team that if they lost the competition, they were

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Speaker 1: all out of a job. What's more, the competitions seemed

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Speaker 1: pretty skewed to them. Their opponents had all the money,

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Speaker 1: all the equipment, and the political connections too. No wonder

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Speaker 1: their lead designer, Barnes Wallace, didn't feel like offering any pointers.

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Speaker 1: And there's a second way in which too much competition

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Speaker 1: can be counterproductive. A few years ago, four behavioral economists

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Speaker 1: Dan Arielli, Urignesi, George Lowenstein, and Nina Mazzar tested the

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Speaker 1: effect of super sharp incentives in a study called Large

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Speaker 1: Stakes and Big Mistakes. They offered people huge rewards of

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Speaker 1: up to six months income if they did well on

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Speaker 1: various tests, like replicating sequences on the children's electronic game

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Speaker 1: Simon or throwing darts at a target. Bigger prizes should

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Speaker 1: encourage more effort, but we all know that there's a

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Speaker 1: point where the prize is too big and the pressure

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Speaker 1: is too great. When the incentives were quite small, people

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Speaker 1: did fine. When the stakes were high, people fell apart

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Speaker 1: while trying to do the very same tasks. So let's

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Speaker 1: sit alongside the fat cats at the Royal Airship works, overstaffed, overfunded,

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Speaker 1: and working on the Socialist airship, the R one oh one,

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Speaker 1: with the close attention and personal support of the air

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Speaker 1: Minister himself, Lord Thomson. The government team used to joke

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Speaker 1: about the shoe string budget of their rivals. Maybe someone

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Speaker 1: should lend them a chok, But the joke hid the

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Speaker 1: pressure they were suffering from the problem of large stakes

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Speaker 1: and big mistakes. Carrying Lord Thompson's hopes and dreams gave

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Speaker 1: them some advantages, but he was to prove an enormous

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Speaker 1: burden in more ways than one. You have to understand

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Speaker 1: how important all this was to Thompson. Remember his vision.

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Speaker 1: He saw airships as flying oases, serene and safe, taking

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Speaker 1: them British political class to the distant outposts of their empire.

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Speaker 1: In accordance with Thompson's grand visions, the R one oh

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Speaker 1: one offered two decks of passenger accommodation, a spacious lounge

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Speaker 1: promenades by large windows to enjoy the view, and a

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Speaker 1: dining room that would seat sixty people while they enjoyed

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Speaker 1: lavish banquets prepared in the onboard kitchen, with serving supervised

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Speaker 1: by the airship's steward. Remember, all of this was cradled

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Speaker 1: just underneath five million cubic feet of highly flammable hydrogen.

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Speaker 1: There was even incredibly a smoking room. All this luxury

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Speaker 1: was a bit ironic for an airship that was supposed

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Speaker 1: to demonstrate the virtues of socialist engineering, but more worryingly,

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Speaker 1: in an experimental ship, these flourishes suggested some serious mission creep.

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Speaker 1: The Socialist R one oh one was over engineered, overdesigned,

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Speaker 1: over specified, and overweight, leaving no leeway for spare fuel,

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Speaker 1: cargo or passengers. The first officer of the R one

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Speaker 1: oh one could see problems ahead. His name was Noel Atherston,

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Speaker 1: and he had been at the Helm that glorious day

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Speaker 1: when it flew out over London. He was a tough

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Speaker 1: analytical man who hoped to captain his own airship one day,

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Speaker 1: but having some two airship crashes in the First World War,

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Speaker 1: he was clear eyed about the risks. Every crewman is

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Speaker 1: to carry a knife at his belt. Trust me, if

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Speaker 1: you want to survive an airship crash, you cut your

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Speaker 1: way out and you do it fast. Noel Atherston knew

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Speaker 1: trouble when he saw it. There's no use in talking

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Speaker 1: of flying to India with only one stop for refueling.

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Speaker 1: Put that much diesel in the tanks and it will

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Speaker 1: never get off the ground. Atherston's diaries reveal his concerns.

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Speaker 1: It's a grossly unfair schedule with impossible tasks, or carried

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Speaker 1: out in a mad Russian panic. But still Lord Thompson

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Speaker 1: increased the pressure. He gave a speech in which he

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Speaker 1: invited one hundred members of Parliament for a ride on

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Speaker 1: the R one o one. It's a cheap, vulgar stunt

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Speaker 1: and an absolutely unjustifiable risk. Wasn't the R one oh

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Speaker 1: one supposed to be an experimental aircraft. It was a

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Speaker 1: huge distraction from the rigorous program of test flights Athurston

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Speaker 1: wanted to conduct. The ship has not finished our trials,

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00:18:14,410 --> 00:18:17,170
Speaker 1: has not got a certificate of airworthiness, and has not

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00:18:17,250 --> 00:18:19,930
Speaker 1: got enough lived to cart twelve tons of humans about

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Speaker 1: with any degree of safety. And there was something else

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00:18:23,370 --> 00:18:27,690
Speaker 1: that appalled First Officer Athurston. In order to create enough

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Speaker 1: lifting capacity for a hundred politicians and their dinner, the

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Speaker 1: R one oh one crew had been ordered to remove

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Speaker 1: all the parachutes. Remember the research that showed that large

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Speaker 1: stakes led to big mistakes. Lord Thompson was raising the

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Speaker 1: stakes at every opportunity. Mistakes would follow. In the end,

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00:18:51,210 --> 00:18:53,650
Speaker 1: the R one oh one crew decided that the weather

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Speaker 1: was too bad to allow the grounds demonstration, and the

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00:18:57,250 --> 00:19:01,210
Speaker 1: hundred VIPs had dinner on board a stationary R one

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Speaker 1: oh one. That display of caution displeased Lord Thompson. I

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00:19:06,890 --> 00:19:09,530
Speaker 1: was hoping for a free breeze so that it show

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00:19:09,530 --> 00:19:13,130
Speaker 1: off its capabilities. The R one o one is and

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00:19:13,330 --> 00:19:18,170
Speaker 1: all were the craft. It really wasn't, but who wanted

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00:19:18,210 --> 00:19:23,890
Speaker 1: to tell that to Lord Thompson. The R one oh

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00:19:23,890 --> 00:19:27,650
Speaker 1: one team grew desperate about the lack of lift in

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00:19:27,730 --> 00:19:31,690
Speaker 1: preparation for the all important flights to India. They expanded

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00:19:31,730 --> 00:19:35,650
Speaker 1: the hydrogen gas bags, which gave more lift, but also

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00:19:35,690 --> 00:19:40,170
Speaker 1: meant that those fragile cow intestine gas bags were chafing

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00:19:40,330 --> 00:19:44,130
Speaker 1: against the bolts of the airship frame. The team even

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00:19:44,210 --> 00:19:48,930
Speaker 1: decided to saw the entire airship apart, insert a new

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00:19:49,090 --> 00:19:52,930
Speaker 1: central section with extra gas bags, and stitch it all

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00:19:52,970 --> 00:19:58,250
Speaker 1: together again. This frankinship was seven hundred and seventy seven

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Speaker 1: feet long, faster and with more lift, but could it

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00:20:03,610 --> 00:20:13,330
Speaker 1: safely fly? October nineteen thirty was the month set for

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Speaker 1: Lord Thompson's favorite child, the R one oh one, to

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Speaker 1: fly to India and back a spectacular voyage with Lord

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Speaker 1: Thompson himself on board. The months before that trip, in

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Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen thirty should have been the moment

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Speaker 1: of truth, the moment when the madness stopped. First, the

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Speaker 1: R one oh one was flown to a nearby air

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Speaker 1: shown to be shown off to the crowds. It was

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Speaker 1: widely reported to have dipped its nose to salute the

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Speaker 1: King and Queen. The crew knew that the salute was

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00:20:47,090 --> 00:20:51,130
Speaker 1: actually an uncontrolled nose dive above a crowd of one

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand people. The huge airship then limped

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00:20:56,610 --> 00:21:01,090
Speaker 1: the few miles back to the Royal Airship Works. The

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00:21:01,290 --> 00:21:04,050
Speaker 1: R one oh one's captain went to examine the gas

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00:21:04,050 --> 00:21:07,050
Speaker 1: bags in an effort to understand what was going wrong.

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00:21:07,730 --> 00:21:11,730
Speaker 1: He made his way slowly along the central walkway, then

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00:21:11,890 --> 00:21:16,130
Speaker 1: climbed up between the bags. The front bag and the

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00:21:16,210 --> 00:21:20,650
Speaker 1: second and the third seemed fine, though the smell of

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00:21:20,690 --> 00:21:25,290
Speaker 1: mold was all pervasive. Climbing up the netting that contained

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00:21:25,290 --> 00:21:29,450
Speaker 1: the fourth bag. He shone his flashlight around and noticed

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00:21:29,490 --> 00:21:35,890
Speaker 1: something small holes. The same was true on bag five

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00:21:36,450 --> 00:21:42,330
Speaker 1: and nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen. In an

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00:21:42,370 --> 00:21:45,250
Speaker 1: effort to give the ship more lift, the R one

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00:21:45,290 --> 00:21:49,290
Speaker 1: o one team had overfilled the fragile bags, which meant

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00:21:49,330 --> 00:21:53,410
Speaker 1: that they were rubbing against the airframe. Hydrogen was bleeding

294
00:21:53,450 --> 00:21:58,130
Speaker 1: out everywhere. If the airship could hardly make a two

295
00:21:58,290 --> 00:22:01,170
Speaker 1: hour round trip, how on earth was it going to

296
00:22:01,290 --> 00:22:07,450
Speaker 1: fly as Lord Thompson demanded several thousand miles to India.

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00:22:07,730 --> 00:22:10,850
Speaker 1: Surely it was the time to admit that the airship

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00:22:11,010 --> 00:22:16,650
Speaker 1: wasn't safe. No, the airship team patched up the problem

299
00:22:16,690 --> 00:22:20,690
Speaker 1: and hope for the best. A few weeks later, a

300
00:22:20,850 --> 00:22:26,530
Speaker 1: mister Frederick mcwade, official airship inspector, came to examine the

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00:22:26,770 --> 00:22:31,130
Speaker 1: R one O one. Mister mcwade climbed up between the

302
00:22:31,250 --> 00:22:35,490
Speaker 1: moldering gas bags, puffing and blowing with the effort. He

303
00:22:35,570 --> 00:22:39,170
Speaker 1: was nearly of pensionable age after all, but then you

304
00:22:39,250 --> 00:22:43,850
Speaker 1: don't spend twenty seven years inspecting airships without learning to

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00:22:43,890 --> 00:22:49,650
Speaker 1: recognize warning signs. Absolutely, he peered closely at the repaired

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00:22:49,690 --> 00:22:52,730
Speaker 1: gas bags this is a death trap. Could the patch

307
00:22:52,810 --> 00:22:56,530
Speaker 1: up job really be trusted to hold how many hours

308
00:22:56,530 --> 00:23:01,090
Speaker 1: of flight before it failed? Mister mcwade had no doubts.

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00:23:01,450 --> 00:23:05,090
Speaker 1: His report was a thunderclas I cannot recommend to you

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00:23:05,170 --> 00:23:08,410
Speaker 1: the extension of the present pyramout to flag or the

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00:23:08,530 --> 00:23:11,930
Speaker 1: issue of and if further permits are certificates. R one

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00:23:11,970 --> 00:23:15,930
Speaker 1: oh one was grounded. But this was a thunderclap that

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00:23:16,010 --> 00:23:19,650
Speaker 1: nobody was prepared to hear, so they covered their ears.

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00:23:20,050 --> 00:23:22,370
Speaker 1: The R one oh one had been built by the government,

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00:23:22,690 --> 00:23:26,770
Speaker 1: and the government issued permits to fly. Nobody wanted to

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00:23:26,810 --> 00:23:35,170
Speaker 1: disappoint Lord Thompson, and so mister mcwade was overruled. There

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00:23:35,250 --> 00:23:37,890
Speaker 1: was another opportunity to call a halt in the late

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00:23:38,090 --> 00:23:41,850
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen thirty, when Barnes Wallace's deputy on the

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00:23:41,970 --> 00:23:45,210
Speaker 1: R one hundred visited the Royal Airship Works to see

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00:23:45,250 --> 00:23:49,330
Speaker 1: the R one oh one. His name was Neville Norway.

321
00:23:50,170 --> 00:23:53,530
Speaker 1: He was later to become famous as the novelist Nevill Shoot.

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00:23:54,410 --> 00:23:58,010
Speaker 1: Neville Shoot Norway was mightily impressed by the appearance of

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Speaker 1: his bitter rival, the R one oh one. She is

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00:24:01,530 --> 00:24:04,610
Speaker 1: an amazing piece of work. The finish and the workmanship

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00:24:04,690 --> 00:24:07,770
Speaker 1: is extraordinarily good, far better than that of our own ship.

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Speaker 1: But you don't sound totally convinced well. The design seems

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00:24:11,410 --> 00:24:16,050
Speaker 1: almost unbelievably complicated. The imagination has run riot, regardless of

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00:24:16,050 --> 00:24:22,450
Speaker 1: the virtue of simplicity, and utterly regardless of expense. Something

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00:24:22,610 --> 00:24:25,770
Speaker 1: strange happened to shoot Norway while he was visiting his

330
00:24:25,930 --> 00:24:30,530
Speaker 1: rivals at the Royal Airship Works. Two officers looked round

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00:24:30,570 --> 00:24:33,770
Speaker 1: to check that nobody was watching, then pulled him into

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00:24:33,850 --> 00:24:37,530
Speaker 1: a private office. They brought out a large sheet of

333
00:24:37,650 --> 00:24:43,530
Speaker 1: silver fabric, clearly a section of airship cover. Shoot Norway

334
00:24:43,770 --> 00:24:47,010
Speaker 1: rubbed it between his fingers and watched in horror as

335
00:24:47,010 --> 00:24:51,050
Speaker 1: it crumbled into flakes, like a piece of charred parchment paper.

336
00:24:51,130 --> 00:24:54,850
Speaker 1: Good God, where did this come from? It had come

337
00:24:55,490 --> 00:24:58,810
Speaker 1: from the nose of R one oh one, where another

338
00:24:58,850 --> 00:25:02,930
Speaker 1: attempt at patch and make do had backfired as glue

339
00:25:02,970 --> 00:25:06,090
Speaker 1: had weakened the lacquer on the cover. I hope they've

340
00:25:06,090 --> 00:25:08,610
Speaker 1: got all this stuff off the ship. They say they have.

341
00:25:09,210 --> 00:25:12,090
Speaker 1: Nevill shoot Norway shrugged. There was nothing he or I

342
00:25:12,090 --> 00:25:15,930
Speaker 1: could have done about it. Perhaps that was true, but

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00:25:16,090 --> 00:25:25,170
Speaker 1: Nevill Shoot Norway didn't try. Before the capitalist R one

344
00:25:25,290 --> 00:25:28,690
Speaker 1: hundreds flight to Canada. The government R one o one

345
00:25:28,730 --> 00:25:34,010
Speaker 1: team had suggested that perhaps these long, dangerous flights might

346
00:25:34,050 --> 00:25:38,850
Speaker 1: be postponed to allow for further testing. If they'd been

347
00:25:38,890 --> 00:25:41,850
Speaker 1: able to be more honest, if they'd been under less

348
00:25:41,890 --> 00:25:47,690
Speaker 1: competitive pressure, they might have begged, dear God, please don't

349
00:25:47,690 --> 00:25:50,730
Speaker 1: make us fly to India. Our airship is a death trap.

350
00:25:51,970 --> 00:25:56,970
Speaker 1: But they didn't. They couldn't. They just politely suggested a

351
00:25:57,010 --> 00:26:01,050
Speaker 1: postponement and shoot Norway, and the R one hundred team

352
00:26:01,250 --> 00:26:06,570
Speaker 1: said no. Again, the bitter competition between the staffs loomed large.

353
00:26:07,210 --> 00:26:09,410
Speaker 1: Perhaps if we had realized that the time I am,

354
00:26:09,410 --> 00:26:12,850
Speaker 1: how very very bad that ship was, how real the

355
00:26:12,930 --> 00:26:16,730
Speaker 1: danger of complete disaster if they started for India, we

356
00:26:16,850 --> 00:26:22,490
Speaker 1: might have taken a different attitude to this approach. I

357
00:26:22,650 --> 00:26:26,490
Speaker 1: wonder if the underfunded R one hundred team were to

358
00:26:26,570 --> 00:26:29,930
Speaker 1: keep their jobs, ours must be the organization to carry

359
00:26:29,930 --> 00:26:34,210
Speaker 1: on the work, and they must give up. But could

360
00:26:34,290 --> 00:26:39,650
Speaker 1: they give up? Lord Thompson had been pressuring the Royal

361
00:26:39,690 --> 00:26:42,490
Speaker 1: Airship Works to stick to the schedule for the R

362
00:26:42,610 --> 00:26:45,890
Speaker 1: one oh one, with the Government of India preparing to

363
00:26:45,930 --> 00:26:50,090
Speaker 1: receive him. A low key experiment had turned into a

364
00:26:50,250 --> 00:26:56,370
Speaker 1: grand diplomatic mission, the Imperial Conference had convened in London.

365
00:26:56,810 --> 00:27:00,170
Speaker 1: This forty five day summit, including the leaders of nations

366
00:27:00,210 --> 00:27:03,690
Speaker 1: as far apart as Canada, India and New Zealand, was

367
00:27:03,770 --> 00:27:07,770
Speaker 1: held every four years. Travel took so long that it

368
00:27:07,810 --> 00:27:12,890
Speaker 1: was impractical to meet more often. So Lord Thompson had

369
00:27:12,930 --> 00:27:17,490
Speaker 1: a spectacular stunt in mind. Having greeted the visitors of

370
00:27:17,570 --> 00:27:21,130
Speaker 1: the conference, he would fly to India and back again

371
00:27:21,530 --> 00:27:24,010
Speaker 1: in plenty of time for the end of the proceedings.

372
00:27:24,610 --> 00:27:28,610
Speaker 1: Fully rested after floating on a bubble of air, his

373
00:27:28,770 --> 00:27:32,370
Speaker 1: triumphant speech would present his plans for a fleet of

374
00:27:32,410 --> 00:27:38,490
Speaker 1: airships to link together the world large stakes. Indeed, I

375
00:27:38,610 --> 00:27:41,330
Speaker 1: must insist on the program for the Indian flight being

376
00:27:41,330 --> 00:27:44,810
Speaker 1: adhered too, as I have made my plans accordingly. Some

377
00:27:44,890 --> 00:27:47,770
Speaker 1: of the R one oh one team begged their bosses

378
00:27:47,810 --> 00:27:51,050
Speaker 1: to speak to Lord Thompson about delaying the flight, but

379
00:27:51,130 --> 00:28:02,850
Speaker 1: they refused His Lordship had made his plans accordingly. Late

380
00:28:03,010 --> 00:28:06,650
Speaker 1: in the afternoon of October the fourth, nineteen thirty, the

381
00:28:06,770 --> 00:28:10,170
Speaker 1: crew of R one oh one waited impatiently for the

382
00:28:10,250 --> 00:28:14,210
Speaker 1: arrival of their most prestigious passenger on their voyage to India,

383
00:28:14,490 --> 00:28:19,930
Speaker 1: Lord Thompson himself. There was a dreadful storm brewing. Ideally

384
00:28:20,210 --> 00:28:23,170
Speaker 1: then have left two hours earlier or half a day

385
00:28:23,250 --> 00:28:28,410
Speaker 1: later to avoid it, but that was unthinkable. Lord Thompson's

386
00:28:28,450 --> 00:28:32,330
Speaker 1: assistant ought to be publicly shot. But putting such impossible

387
00:28:32,370 --> 00:28:36,450
Speaker 1: tasks to us, that was Noel Atherston. Complaining to his diary,

388
00:28:37,330 --> 00:28:41,250
Speaker 1: he left the diary behind on his desk, his final entry,

389
00:28:41,770 --> 00:28:44,810
Speaker 1: Let's hope for good luck and do our best. He

390
00:28:44,850 --> 00:28:50,530
Speaker 1: would never write another. The weather didn't worry Lord Thompson.

391
00:28:50,970 --> 00:28:55,330
Speaker 1: The ship, he insisted, was stormproof. To ride the storm

392
00:28:55,330 --> 00:28:59,530
Speaker 1: has always been my ambition, and who knows, we may

393
00:28:59,650 --> 00:29:02,730
Speaker 1: realize it. On the way to India, while they waited

394
00:29:02,730 --> 00:29:05,970
Speaker 1: for Lord Thompson, the ground crew topped up the gas bags.

395
00:29:06,010 --> 00:29:09,770
Speaker 1: Also he used pumping guests into a bloody colindar. Everyone

396
00:29:09,810 --> 00:29:12,170
Speaker 1: and the crew knew the bags were in poor shape.

397
00:29:12,690 --> 00:29:15,530
Speaker 1: George William Hunt was one of the senior officers on

398
00:29:15,610 --> 00:29:20,210
Speaker 1: the R one oh one. His son Albert remembers carrying

399
00:29:20,290 --> 00:29:22,970
Speaker 1: his father's kit bag as they walked down the road

400
00:29:23,050 --> 00:29:26,210
Speaker 1: to the airship shed at Cardington. It was a few

401
00:29:26,210 --> 00:29:29,730
Speaker 1: hours before take off. In the shadow of the ship,

402
00:29:30,170 --> 00:29:33,570
Speaker 1: his father stopped then He turned to his son. Now,

403
00:29:34,170 --> 00:29:37,210
Speaker 1: look that I want you to make me two promises.

404
00:29:38,570 --> 00:29:41,730
Speaker 1: One is you'll join the navy, and the other one

405
00:29:41,850 --> 00:29:44,130
Speaker 1: is you'll promise me that you'll look after your mother

406
00:29:44,450 --> 00:29:47,170
Speaker 1: and your sister, because I may not be coming back

407
00:29:47,170 --> 00:29:51,530
Speaker 1: off this flying The R one O one's captain understood

408
00:29:51,570 --> 00:29:55,410
Speaker 1: how marginal his ship's lifting capacity was. He tried to

409
00:29:55,490 --> 00:29:59,250
Speaker 1: save every ounce. When crew members tried to take cookie

410
00:29:59,290 --> 00:30:02,090
Speaker 1: jars aboard, they were told to transfer the cookies into

411
00:30:02,130 --> 00:30:06,450
Speaker 1: paper bags. Each had a spare shirt in underwear. Again,

412
00:30:06,770 --> 00:30:10,930
Speaker 1: in a paper parcel suitcase would have been far too heavy.

413
00:30:14,530 --> 00:30:17,970
Speaker 1: It was five fifteen in the afternoon when Lord Thompson's

414
00:30:18,050 --> 00:30:22,050
Speaker 1: chauffeur drove his Lordship's Daimler up to the mooring tower,

415
00:30:23,130 --> 00:30:27,970
Speaker 1: and the noble Lord, still wearing his Homburg hat, unfolded

416
00:30:28,010 --> 00:30:31,330
Speaker 1: his elongated frame and stood at the foot of the

417
00:30:31,370 --> 00:30:36,010
Speaker 1: mast to admire his airship. His luggage was loaded into

418
00:30:36,050 --> 00:30:39,890
Speaker 1: the towers elevator, including the briefcase with his notes for

419
00:30:39,890 --> 00:30:44,650
Speaker 1: the triumphant speech he would deliver on his return. Here

420
00:30:44,690 --> 00:30:48,850
Speaker 1: we are his Lordship's dress, short, two trunks, four suitcases,

421
00:30:48,890 --> 00:30:51,450
Speaker 1: and twenty four bottles of champagne, and we'll need four

422
00:30:51,570 --> 00:30:56,890
Speaker 1: porters to shipt this carpet. Hurry along. Ah, yes, the

423
00:30:57,210 --> 00:31:01,490
Speaker 1: ornamental carpet. It weighed as much as a full grown man.

424
00:31:02,090 --> 00:31:05,610
Speaker 1: My precious cupboard. We'll have it down for the dinners

425
00:31:05,610 --> 00:31:08,690
Speaker 1: at his Melia and Karachi to do the thing in style.

426
00:31:10,050 --> 00:31:14,370
Speaker 1: At six thirty, with Lord Thompson and his carpet on board,

427
00:31:14,930 --> 00:31:19,330
Speaker 1: the R one oh one finally slipped the tower. Immediately,

428
00:31:19,370 --> 00:31:22,970
Speaker 1: the nose dipped and the captain released tons of ballast

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00:31:22,970 --> 00:31:26,490
Speaker 1: water to get her level again. Heavily loaded with fuel

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00:31:27,010 --> 00:31:31,970
Speaker 1: and carpets and champagne, the ship was pitching and rolling

431
00:31:32,090 --> 00:31:35,890
Speaker 1: even more than usual. It turned towards France in the

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00:31:35,970 --> 00:31:39,610
Speaker 1: teeth of the storm. The crew were exhausted, having been

433
00:31:39,650 --> 00:31:43,090
Speaker 1: working around the clock to squeeze in short test flights

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00:31:43,210 --> 00:31:47,050
Speaker 1: and patch up problems with the engines, the gas bags,

435
00:31:47,090 --> 00:31:52,730
Speaker 1: and the cover inside the passenger decks. The esteemed guests,

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00:31:52,930 --> 00:31:57,570
Speaker 1: including Lord Thompson and the airship's designers, were being served salad,

437
00:31:57,730 --> 00:32:02,690
Speaker 1: cold meats and fish. Three hours into the flight, the

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00:32:02,930 --> 00:32:06,650
Speaker 1: R one oh one crossed the English coast and chugged

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00:32:06,730 --> 00:32:12,130
Speaker 1: out over the sea towards France. The passengers chatted, smoked,

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00:32:12,450 --> 00:32:15,730
Speaker 1: and listened to music before making their way to their beds.

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00:32:16,730 --> 00:32:20,010
Speaker 1: They didn't realize quite how low over the waves the

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00:32:20,050 --> 00:32:23,650
Speaker 1: airship had dropped. It was sagging under the weight of

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00:32:23,690 --> 00:32:27,450
Speaker 1: the rain, soaking into the cover. The shattered crew kept

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00:32:27,650 --> 00:32:29,970
Speaker 1: trying to lift up her nose, get her to show

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00:32:30,010 --> 00:32:32,850
Speaker 1: a bit of pride in the face of the storm,

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00:32:32,970 --> 00:32:38,170
Speaker 1: all the while the ship was barely making progress. At

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00:32:38,210 --> 00:32:41,290
Speaker 1: two o'clock in the morning, there was a change of watch.

448
00:32:42,530 --> 00:32:45,490
Speaker 1: The airship was supposed to be flying at two thousand

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00:32:45,570 --> 00:32:49,610
Speaker 1: feet over the town of Beauvais, north of Paris, but

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00:32:49,690 --> 00:32:53,330
Speaker 1: the crew could see beauve Cathedral up close as they passed.

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00:32:54,370 --> 00:32:59,010
Speaker 1: The ship was diving. In the smoking room, some glasses

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00:32:59,050 --> 00:33:04,930
Speaker 1: and a soda water siphon slid off the table down

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00:33:04,970 --> 00:33:08,050
Speaker 1: on the ground. Despite the late hour and the rain,

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00:33:09,130 --> 00:33:13,890
Speaker 1: Monsieur Alfred Rubai was out hoping to bag some rabbits

455
00:33:13,930 --> 00:33:20,130
Speaker 1: for Sunday lunch. As the Titanic ship loomed down out

456
00:33:20,130 --> 00:33:26,850
Speaker 1: of the low clouds, he gazed in horror. Far bigger

457
00:33:26,890 --> 00:33:29,930
Speaker 1: than the cathedral of Beauvais, the R one oh one

458
00:33:30,130 --> 00:33:34,290
Speaker 1: was moving slowly forward, her nose down as though she

459
00:33:34,330 --> 00:33:37,730
Speaker 1: had given up and just wanted to be allowed to rest.

460
00:33:39,330 --> 00:33:44,290
Speaker 1: Her thin, wet, fragile front cover had almost certainly ripped

461
00:33:44,410 --> 00:33:49,210
Speaker 1: under the incessant winds, exposing the perforated hydrogen gas bags

462
00:33:49,410 --> 00:33:54,490
Speaker 1: to the direct force of the storm. The airship briefly

463
00:33:54,570 --> 00:33:57,970
Speaker 1: pulled out of its dive, a final show of defiance.

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00:33:58,930 --> 00:34:03,890
Speaker 1: Then she dipped again with downs at two o eight

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00:34:04,610 --> 00:34:08,170
Speaker 1: R one oh one, gently nose dived into a forest

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00:34:08,330 --> 00:34:13,530
Speaker 1: near Beauvais, the dark granches tearing into her skin. She

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00:34:13,650 --> 00:34:17,650
Speaker 1: was traveling no more than fifteen miles an hour. The

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00:34:17,730 --> 00:34:21,250
Speaker 1: passengers would have felt an impact like falling off a bicycle,

469
00:34:22,050 --> 00:34:26,490
Speaker 1: but no bicycle carries five million cubic feet of hydrogen.

470
00:34:28,210 --> 00:34:32,810
Speaker 1: A single spark and the darkness of the forest was

471
00:34:32,890 --> 00:34:41,730
Speaker 1: banished by an instant, hellish blaze. Alfred Rubet was the

472
00:34:41,810 --> 00:34:45,530
Speaker 1: only witness. I heard the puper in the wreckage crying

473
00:34:45,570 --> 00:34:48,490
Speaker 1: for help. I was one hundred yard zowey and he

474
00:34:49,210 --> 00:34:52,090
Speaker 1: was offer. So I ran as hard as I could

475
00:34:52,130 --> 00:34:56,170
Speaker 1: away from that place. Just eight men managed to get out.

476
00:34:57,330 --> 00:35:01,010
Speaker 1: Among the forty eight victims of the crash were First

477
00:35:01,050 --> 00:35:04,490
Speaker 1: Officer Noel Atherston, who'd repeatedly called for the flight to

478
00:35:04,530 --> 00:35:08,370
Speaker 1: be postponed. The entire design team of the R one

479
00:35:08,370 --> 00:35:12,890
Speaker 1: oh one and the boss of them all, Christopher Birdwood Thompson.

480
00:35:13,850 --> 00:35:19,090
Speaker 1: The competition was over R one oh one. The serene

481
00:35:19,130 --> 00:35:26,410
Speaker 1: hope of the future had lost, as nevill shoot Norway

482
00:35:26,530 --> 00:35:30,210
Speaker 1: later wrote, if the Cabinet committee wanted competition, they got

483
00:35:30,250 --> 00:35:33,530
Speaker 1: it with a vengeance, and I wouldn't say that it

484
00:35:33,570 --> 00:35:37,330
Speaker 1: was healthy. There was an inquiry, but nobody from the

485
00:35:37,450 --> 00:35:40,530
Speaker 1: rival R one hundred team was asked to give evidence.

486
00:35:41,010 --> 00:35:45,530
Speaker 1: Even in tragedy, the bitterness of the contest remained. But

487
00:35:45,690 --> 00:35:50,730
Speaker 1: of course, of course, after the R one oh one crashed,

488
00:35:51,370 --> 00:35:55,690
Speaker 1: the R one hundred never flew again. It was sworn up,

489
00:35:56,130 --> 00:36:03,210
Speaker 1: bulldozed and sold for scrap. There are some competitions then

490
00:36:03,890 --> 00:36:14,770
Speaker 1: that everybody loses. You've been listening to Cautionary Tales. If

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00:36:14,810 --> 00:36:16,890
Speaker 1: you'd like to find out more about the ideas in

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00:36:16,890 --> 00:36:20,450
Speaker 1: this episode, including links to our sources, the show notes

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00:36:20,490 --> 00:36:24,850
Speaker 1: are on my website Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary Tales

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00:36:24,970 --> 00:36:28,690
Speaker 1: is written and presented by me, Tim Harford. Our producers

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00:36:28,770 --> 00:36:32,410
Speaker 1: are Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust. The sound designer and

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00:36:32,490 --> 00:36:36,850
Speaker 1: mixer was Pascal Wise, who also composed the amazing music.

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00:36:39,050 --> 00:36:43,810
Speaker 1: Starring in this season are Alan Cumming, Archie Panjabi, Toby

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00:36:43,850 --> 00:36:50,010
Speaker 1: Stevens and Russell Toby, alongside Enzo Chellente, Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge,

499
00:36:50,170 --> 00:36:55,690
Speaker 1: was Siam and Rowe and rufus Wright and introducing Malcolm Gladwell.

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00:36:58,330 --> 00:37:02,490
Speaker 1: Thanks to the team at Pushkin Industries, Julia Barton, Heather Fame,

501
00:37:02,930 --> 00:37:07,330
Speaker 1: Mia LaBelle, Carlie Miliori, Jacob Weisberg and of course the

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00:37:07,490 --> 00:37:10,810
Speaker 1: mighty Malcolm Gladwell. And thanks to my colleagues at The

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00:37:10,850 --> 00:37:11,730
Speaker 1: Financial Times