His Majesty's Airship: the Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine, Gwynne - B

                     Albeit British and symbolic of the empire, R101,  an airship 770 feet long and twice the volume of the world's largest steamship, "was in form and function a zeppelin," a rigid airship. "R101 was the largest, most expensive, most streamlined, and most technologically sophisticated zeppelin-style airship ever built." Count von Zeppelin conceived of, built and flew his new machines. Almost all of his pre-war ships crashed. During WWI, the military managed to achieve long round-trip flights for the airships. Britain decided to match and surpass the Germans. 

                     R101 was perceived of as a way to quickly and luxuriously transverse the vast empire of Great Britain. On Oct. 4, 1930, she left Cardington on a trip that would bring her to India. Onboard were 5 officers, 37 crew, and 11 VIP's. Over London, they received news that they were headed into 40-50 mph winds on the way to Paris. They decided to continue even though it was well known that flying in those conditions was perilous.  Over the Channel, "she continued to simultaneously pitch and roll in ways no one had seen before, her enormous, waterlogged, linen-clad bow rising and dropping hundreds of feet, while she rocked side to side..." By 2.00  in the morning, the wind had slowed the ship down to 20 mph, and at exactly 2:09 am, she pitched down and crashed in northern France. The hydrogen gas ignited. A few manged to jump to safety. Of the 54 men aboard, only 6 survived.

                     The funeral services saw "the greatest outpouring of national grief in Great Britain" since the 1912 sinking of Titanic. Neither the Court of inquiry nor a computer simulation run half a century later could ascertain exactly what happened. In 2014, a physicist concluded, and all agreed, that an elevator cable had snapped depriving the crew of the ability to "lift" the nose while the ship pitched up and down in the wind.

                    The British airship program was soon terminated. Three years later, America's 'Akron' crashed killing 73 of 76 crewmen. Two years later, its sister ship crashed and ended the American program. On the other hand, the German ship, the 'Graf,' was successfully traveling around the world. Of course, the 1936 'Hindenburg' crash was the finale of the airship era.