Fatal Flight: The True Story of Britain's Last Great Airship

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 ships 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 Britains 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 humankinds obsession with flight