Ramon Lopez/WASHINGTON DC
AIRSHIP manufacturing will resume in the UK as soon as a UK investor group finalises its purchase of designs, patents and other assets of Westinghouse Airships.
The transaction (Flight International, 10-16 April) will be completed shortly, says Roger Munk, who is leading the acquisition. Munk, who previously worked for Airship Industries and Westinghouse Airships, says: "We are in the final stages of completing the deal."
The airship chief designer is teamed with the London Wall investor group which "orchestrated" the purchase from Westinghouse Electric, but is not an investor. Munk says that London Wall members had helped create UK company Airship Industries, which designed the Sentinel airships and was later sold to Westinghouse.
Munk is establishing an administrative and design office in Bedford, in the UK. He also has a small site in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, but the US operation could move to Weeksville, North Carolina, where Westinghouse Airships had leased space from aerostat-manufacturer TCOM.
Munk is without the most valuable asset - an airship. On 2 August, 1995, a fire destroyed the only Westinghouse Sentinel 1000 non-rigid airship in existence.
The airship designer is "confident" that he has a purchaser for a Sentinel 1240, the follow-on to the Sentinel 1000. It would be slightly larger than its predecessor, with a new, 15m-long gondola, designed to accommodate 40 passengers.
The new airship will have two Zoche ZO-04A eight-cylinder radial diesel engines and may have a tail-mounted sprint engine.
Source: Flight International
