His Majesty's Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine

By S. C. Gwynne

When the R101 first took to the skies, she was the largest aircraft ever to fly. What followed was a tragic finale to a tale of human folly on a grand scale.

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In 1929, the R101 was the largest object ever to take to the air. It was meant to dazzle the world with cutting-edge technology and awesome size. Better than a plane, more luxurious than an ocean liner, the R101 would connect the furthest reaches of the British Empire, tying together far-flung dominions at a time when imperial bonds were fraying. It was, however, not to be.

The spectacular crash of the British airship R101 in 1930 changed the world of aviation forever. Most have heard of the fiery crash of the Hindenburg, a German ship that went down in New Jersey seven years later. But the story of R101 and its forty-eight victims has largely been forgotten.

His Majesty’s Airship recounts the epic narrative of the ill-fated airship and her eccentric champion, Christopher Thomson. S. C. Gwynne brings to life a lost world of aviators driven by ambition, and killed by hubris.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Release date: Oct 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9780861547098

S. C. Gwynne

S.C. Gwynne is the author of His Majesty’s Airship, Hymns of the Republic, and the New York Times bestsellers Rebel Yell and Empire of the Summer Moon, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He spent most of his career as a journalist, including stints with Time as bureau chief, national correspondent, and senior editor, and with Texas Monthly as executive editor. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife.

Reviews for His Majesty's Airship

[shrike58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although I've been aware of the R101 disaster for many years now, this book couldn't have been written even ten years ago. On one hand, there was a need for modern forensic work. On the other, there was a lack of clear-headed acceptance of the bad judgement in play at the time of the disaster, which prevented a more hard-headed analysis. This is with the additional problem that the serious critics (men such as Barnes Wallis & Neville Shute, who were in competition with the team building R101), were obviously prejudiced. That brings us to this work, and Gwynne is not prepared to pull any punches, coming from the starting position that the big dirigibles were always impractical death traps, but survived on being icons of nationalistic endeavor, at least until there was no denying that the airplane had surpassed them. This is really not news.What hasn't been widely advertised in a credible form is just how dubious the R100 and the R101 were in terms of being viable enterprises that one could depend on, never mind being the linchpins of a global transportation system tying the British Empire together. Whereas as the great engineer Barnes Wallis scoffed at the men building the R101, his own R100 wasn't tremendously better; the machines were just too fragile to accomplish what was demanded of them. However, the most blame has to attach to Lord Christopher Thompson, as the responsible official. He saw airships as a potential means to preserve the British Empire, while at the same time advancing his own career. That he generally seems to have been an admirable individual doesn't really excuse that he presided over a disaster waiting to happen, and was too willing to take stupid risks for the glory of it all. Then again, taking what now look like stupid risks seems like a congenital disease with the airship enthusiasts; the R101 became the funeral pyre of the men who designed her.