1, the Willows airship No. 2, and so on. These
numbers were allocated regardless of type and as each airship was
ordered, consequently some of these ships, for example the
Forlaninis, never existed. That did not matter, however, and
these numbers were not utilized for ships which actually were
commissioned. On the transfer of the army airships, four of
these, the Beta, Gamma, Delta and Eta, were given their numbers
as they were taken over, together with two ships of the Epsilon
class which were ordered from Messrs. Rolls Royce, but never
completed. In this way it will be seen that numbers 1 to 22 are
accounted for.
In 1915 it was decided to build a large number of small ships for
anti-submarine patrol, which were called S.S.'s or Submarine
Scouts. It was felt that it would only make confusion worse
confounded if these ships bore the original system of successive
numbering and were mixed up with those of later classes which it
was known would be produced as soon as the designs were
completed. Each of these ships was accordingly numbered in its
own class, S.S., S.S.P., S.S. Zero, Coastal, C Star and North
Sea, from 1 onwards as they were completed.
In the case of the rigids, however, for some occult reason the
old system of numbering was persisted in.
Pages:
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83