The R-101 Airship Crashes
Contributor: Barry Fetzer
Sources: History.com
I just finished reading a book about airships, focused on the conception, development, and ultimate demise of one of the biggest aircraft ever to grace the skies: the British airship R-101. The book by S.C. Gwynne is entitled His Majesty’s Airship—The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine (2023, Scribner, NY, NY.)
“R-101”, the book flap recounts, “went down in a spectacular hydrogen-fueled fireball, killing more people than the Hindenburg disaster seven years later and had largely been forgotten.” Gwynne, the flap continues, “resurrects [the airship] in vivid detail telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong.” It is “indubitably” (as my father-in-law used to say) a very good read.
And today, 93 years ago on October 5, 1930, that British dirigible according to History.com, “crashed in Beauvais, France, killing all but seven people onboard. The airship, which was Great Britain’s biggest, had first been launched about a year earlier.
“In the 1920s, the major European nations competed with each other to build larger and larger airships in order to gain control over the fledgling air-travel industry. As the decade came to an end, the R-101 was Great Britain’s latest model. It was 777 feet long, weighed 150 tons and could carry 100 passengers. It was powered by six Rolls-Royce engines.
I just finished reading a book about airships, focused on the conception, development, and ultimate demise of one of the biggest aircraft ever to grace the skies: the British airship R-101. The book by S.C. Gwynne is entitled His Majesty’s Airship—The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine (2023, Scribner, NY, NY.)
“R-101”, the book flap recounts, “went down in a spectacular hydrogen-fueled fireball, killing more people than the Hindenburg disaster seven years later and had largely been forgotten.” Gwynne, the flap continues, “resurrects [the airship] in vivid detail telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong.” It is “indubitably” (as my father-in-law used to say) a very good read.
And today, 93 years ago on October 5, 1930, that British dirigible according to History.com, “crashed in Beauvais, France, killing all but seven people onboard. The airship, which was Great Britain’s biggest, had first been launched about a year earlier.
“In the 1920s, the major European nations competed with each other to build larger and larger airships in order to gain control over the fledgling air-travel industry. As the decade came to an end, the R-101 was Great Britain’s latest model. It was 777 feet long, weighed 150 tons and could carry 100 passengers. It was powered by six Rolls-Royce engines.
R-101 at its mooring mast in Cardington, England, circa 1930 (Photo unattributed, courtesy Wikipedia)
“On its maiden voyage on October 14, 1929, engine troubles arose immediately, causing the R-101 to be grounded for almost a year. Finally, it was brought back into service the following October with assistance from Lord Thomson, a member of Parliament who championed the endeavor. Thomson was one of four passengers, along with a 52-member crew, on board the dirigible as it took off on the evening of October 5 for a trip to the Far East.
“The trip was problematic from the start. First, the crew accidentally released four tons of water ballast, the weight carried in order to control altitude, at the outset of the trip. They also took off straight into a storm hovering over the English Channel, even though dirigibles were known to be dangerous in bad weather. As soon as the R-101 reached the air over France, it was not able to hold a level altitude and was flying only 250 feet above the town of Poix. The pilots were not aware of the problem because of the dark night. Soon, the ship was skimming the trees of Beauvais. Eventually it hit a small ridge and the impact ignited the airship’s hydrogen supply.”