His Majesty's Airship R101 was intended to be an aerial flagship, connecting the far-flung outposts of the Empire in a fraction of the time it took to make a sea voyage. Her story is one of grand dreams and fine ideas, brilliant technology, political and romantic intrigue, human weakness, heroism and ultimate tragedy. The ill-starred career of the gigantic airship and her horrific fiery end on a French hillside exert the same kind of fascination reserved for the Titanic and the Hindenburg. Her loss in 1930 sent the nation into shock, marking the end of Britain's interest in airships and even perhaps representing the death throes of the imperial dream. This pictorial history of the airship is based on the archives of the Airship Heritage Trust. These include the records of the Royal Airship Works, which built the R101 and have previously denied all access.

Fatal Flight brings vividly to life the year of operation of R.101, the last great British airship--a luxury liner three and a half times the length of a 747 jet, with a spacious lounge, a dining room that seated fifty, glass-walled promenade decks, and a smoking room. The British expected R.101 to spearhead a fleet of imperial airships that would dominate the skies as British naval ships, a century earlier, had ruled the seas. The dream ended when, on its demonstration flight to India, R.101 crashed in France, tragically killing nearly all aboard. Combining meticulous research with superb storytelling, Fatal Flight guides us from the moment the great airship emerged from its giant shed--nearly the largest building in the British Empire--to soar on its first flight, to its last fateful voyage. The full story behind R.101 shows that, although it was a failure, it was nevertheless a supremely imaginative human creation. The technical achievement of creating R.101 reveals the beauty, majesty, and, of course, the sorrow of the human experience. The narrative follows First Officer Noel Atherstone and his crew from the ship's first test flight in 1929 to its fiery crash on October 5, 1930. It reveals in graphic detail the heroic actions of Atherstone as he battled tremendous obstacles. He fought political pressures to hurry the ship into the air, fended off Britain's most feted airship pilot, who used his influence to take command of the ship and nearly crashed it, and, a scant two months before departing for India, guided the rebuilding of the ship to correct its faulty design. After this tragic accident, Britain abandoned airships, but R.101 flew again, its scrap melted down and sold to the Zeppelin Company, who used it to create LZ 129, an airship even more mighty than R.101--and better known as the Hindenburg. Set against the backdrop of the British Empire at the height of its power in the early twentieth century, Fatal Flight portrays an extraordinary age in technology, fueled by humankind's obsession with flight

The R.101, larger than any other airship in the world, was built at Cardington, near Bedford, in 1930. Seven hours into her maiden voyage to India, in increasingly threatening weather, she crashed into a hillside at Beauvais in France. Of the 54 people on board, all but eight died instantly. This is the report of the inquiry into the disaster and the tragic loss of life which exposed the pressure from the Air Minister, Lord Thomson, that, whatever the technical causes of the crash, had at the last minute unduly hurried designers, constructors and crew. The early end of the airship in modern commercial flight was the result. Uncovered Editions are historic official papers which have not previously been available in a popular form.

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