Author(s): S. C. Gwynne

Travel

The British airship R101 captivated the world as a symbol of the future: the largest aircraft ever to have flown, the product of the world's most advanced engineering, and the linchpin of an imperial British scheme to link by air the far-flung areas of its empire. There was just one problem: beyond the hype and technological wonders, these big, steel-framed, hydrogen-filled airships were a dangerously bad idea. In 1930, the R101 went down in a spectacular hydrogen-fueled fireball, killing more people than the Hindenburg disaster seven years later. In this vivid account, S. C. Gwynne resurrects the ship along with its remarkable-and often tragically flawed-cast of characters, including Lord Christopher Thomson, the man who dreamed up the Imperial Airship Scheme and then pushed R101 to her destruction; Princess Marthe Bibesco, the writer and beguiling socialite with whom Thomson had a long affair; and George Herbert Scott, a national hero who devolved into drink and ruin. These historical figures-and the ship they built, flew, and crashed-come together in a grand tale about doomed ambitions on the rocky road to commercial aviation.