Flight Lieutenant Herbert Carmichael "Bird" Irwin, AFC (26 June 1894 – 5 October 1930) was an Irish aviator and Olympic athlete.
During World War I, Irwin served in the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), where he commanded non-rigid airships. After the Great War, the "tall sensitive Irishman" commanded larger rigid airships, initially for the Royal Air Force (RAF) and later on secondment to the (civilian) Royal Airship Works as part of the Imperial Airship Scheme.
Both before and after WWI, Irwin also had a successful career as a middle- and long-distance and cross-country runner, and he represented Great Britain at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium.
Irwin's aviation career culminated in his command of the airship R101, the largest airship in the world at the time; he was killed along with another 47 people when it crashed in northern France on a flight from Britain to India.
Early life
Herbert Carmichael Irwin was born in Dundrum, County Dublin, on 26 June 1894, the second of four sons born to Thomas Frederick Irwin, a solicitor, and his wife Elinor Emily Lindsay Carroll, a daughter of the rector of Dundrum. He was baptised in Taney Parish on 1 August. Irwin's father and two uncles, Herbert Irwin and Major General Sir James Murray Irwin, were noted members of the Dublin University Rowing Club, and one of his grandmothers was a sister of Major-General Sir Herbert Benjamin Edwardes. His godfather was Sir Thomas Myles, a well-known Dublin surgeon, Home Rule campaigner and, later, gunrunner for the Irish Volunteers.
Irwin attended St. Andrew's College, Dublin, from August 1909 to June 1913.
Athletic career
Irwin was a member of the Dublin athletic club Clonliffe Harriers, which commemorates him with a trophy, the Irwin Memorial Challenge Cup. Aged 18, in 1914, he was the Irish four-mile champion, as well as the winner of the Irish senior and junior cross-country championships. After the war, he went on to represent Great Britain at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp.
At the Games, Irwin finished second in Semifinal 1 of the men's 5000 metres on 16 August, achieving a career best. However, he was unable to repeat his performance in the final on the following day, finishing only twelfth. After the event, Irwin went on to be the Irish mile and four-mile champion in 1921. He was also the RAF mile champion in 1920 and RAF three-mile champion in 1919, 1920 and 1922.
Irwin's personal bests were 4:33.8 in the mile (set in 1920), 15:15.6 in the three miles (set in 1919) and 15:17.8 in the 5000 metres (set at the 1920 Olympics).
Military career
Irwin joined the RNAS in 1915 and was entered as a Probationary Flight Sub-Lieutenant on 13 August of that year. He went on to command non-rigid airships of the SS Zero, Coastal and NS types "in Home Waters and the East Mediterranean" during 1916 and 1917 and was promoted to Flight Lieutenant with seniority 1 April 1917. At RNAS East Fortune, Scotland, he "enjoyed the reputation of having the smartest ship." Under the RAF, which subsumed the RNAS in 1918, he was granted a short-service commission as Flight Lieutenant on 24 October 1919.
Irwin subsequently commanded the rigid R29, with Noël Atherstone, who would again be his second-in-command on R101, as his first officer. He became captain of the R36, by now regarded as a civil aircraft, in 1921. On the R36's 14 June 1921 trial flight, with journalists and Metropolitan Police representatives aboard, to assess the airship's value for road-traffic control during the Ascot Races, he served as an officer under Major George Herbert Scott (who had commanded the R34 on its Atlantic crossing in 1919 and was to become another victim of the R101 disaster) .
On 21 June, however, Irwin and Scott were involved in an incident with the same ship when, approaching RNAS Pulham, Scott "took over from Lt Irwin and decided to direct the landing himself." An excessively rapid approach to the mooring mast led to a violent deceleration and accidental ballast release, causing a sudden pitch-up that badly damaged the ship's bow. Irwin "broke down" on seeing the scale of the damage. The accident was attributed to equipment failure, and the R36 never flew again (despite various proposals to recommission it), remaining in its hangar until broken up in June 1926. The episode was not the first landing accident in which Scott had been involved and foreshadowed several incidents involving the R101. Subsequently, Irwin became captain of the R80.