His Majesty's airship : the life and tragic death of the world's largest flying machine

Gwynne, S. C. (Samuel C.), 1953- author.

Book 2023

"The tragic story of the British airship R101--which went down in a spectacular hydrogen-fueled fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later--has been largely forgotten. In His Majesty's Airship, historian S.C. Gwynne resurrects it in vivid detail, telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong. Airships, those airborne leviathans that occupied center stage in the world in the first ha...

Item Details & Discovery

Explore Topics & Themes:

Air travel History

Aircraft accidents

Airships History

R101 (Airship)

Thomson, Christopher Birdwood, Baron, 1875-1930

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ISBN:

9781982168278
1982168277

Edition:

First Scribner hardcover edition

Description:

x, 299 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Contents:

Dreams, pipe dreams, and imperial visions
Brief history of a bad idea
Night and storm
Flying death trap
"The feeling of utter loneliness"
The idea that would not die
India seems a very long way
She floats free
Trial by error
France, and the midnight hour
The perfectly safe experimental prototype
The violent, unseen world
Fools rush in
A very violent end
Solving the mystery : what caused the crash?
Bloody end of a bloody era

LCCN:

2022058230

Control Number:

3245890

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