HIS MAJESTY'S AIRSHIP

The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine this is a THE TIMES, BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2023. In October 1930 Lord Thomson, Secretary of State for Air and lover of the scandalous Romanian princess Marthe Bibesco, embarked in the world's largest airship, R101, to fly 5000 miles to India. Thomson was one of the technocratic breed who championed the new mode of transport, and he had championed a completely unrealistic scheme of what an airship-building programme could achieve. Named as a possible successor to the current viceroy of India, he was also part of a movement that placed great importance on retaining Britain's dwindling empire, and as the airship became airborne the assembled crowds sang "Land of Hope and Glory". Larger in volume than the Titanic and very well appointed inside, R101 was lighter than its volume of air. She was said to be flameproof and the rigid structure far exceeded the minimum standards. Thomson arrived with a large amount of paraphernalia including two heavy carpets, but it was not weight that caused the fatal crash, but rather an inattention to general safety. The previous year there had been 51 commercial airliner crashes with fatalities, and of 125 German zeppelins in World War I, 46 were destroyed by gunfire and 35 came to grief by fire or other disaster. In spite of this the British were confident that theirs was a superior technology, and the further advantage of an airship was the distance it could travel without refuelling. The author describes the final moments over France as the airship plunged, ballast was jettisoned, and it finally went into a dive from which few people escaped. Politicians quickly arrived on the scene and were quick to express anger at the scheme's originators and at Thomson who had hitched his political ambition to the ship's success. The Hindenburg disaster eight years later showed that lessons had not been learnt, and recent research suggests that the severing of a cable originated the crash. 15 x 23.4cm, 299pp, black and white photos, maps.