ET Willows Welsh airship pioneer

ET Willows is a little known early aviation pioneer who carried out much of his early work and research in Cardiff.
You can learn more about him and his first 'Welsh' airships in the story map below :

Thanks to Bill Welker for sharing his original material and research to help create the story map, you can read updated information and more fascinating airship history at https://welweb.org/ThenandNow/

Airship Sheds

There are no surviving 'portable' airship hangers in existence although they featured at many of the RNAS airship stations.With the centenary of the fire and explosion on January 22nd, 1918 at the Pembroke airship station, we have turned our attention to these little-known structures.

There are a number of good images of the hanger that was built at RNAS Pembroke, (those below supplied by Brian Turpin) but it is hard to imagine or appreciate the sheer scale of these buildings and the windbreaks that protected the airships as they were walked in and out of the sheds.

The timber framework as built at Pembroke is a modified version of the plan presented above and has a straight truss rather than the curve section...maybe it was beyond the skills of the carpenters to create these curves?

You can explore this shed with the 3d model below, I hope it gives a good impression of the size and materials that went into these buildings.

Click on the image below to activate the 3d model, which is best viewed as a full-screen image.