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His Majesty's airship : the life and tragic death of the world's largest flying machine / S. C. Gwynne.

by Gwynne, S. C. (Samuel C.), 1953-

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Scribner, 2023.

629.1332409 G995h

Airships -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century.

Aircraft accidents -- England -- History -- 20th century.

Military airships -- History.

9781982168278 (hc.)

x, 299 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"In 'His Majesty's Airship,' historian S.C. Gwynne resurrects it in vivid detail, telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong. Airships, those airborne leviathans that occupied center stage in the world in the first half of the twentieth century, were a symbol of the future. R101 was not just the largest aircraft ever to have flown and the product of the world's most advanced engineering; she was also the lynchpin of an imperial British scheme to link by air the far-flung areas of its empire from Australia to India, South Africa, Canada, Egypt, and Singapore. No one had ever conceived of anything like this. R101 captivated the world. There was just one problem: beyond the hype and technological wonders, these big, steel-framed, hydrogen-filled airships were a dangerously bad idea. Gwynne's chronicle features a cast of remarkable-and often tragically flawed-characters, including Lord Christopher Thomson, the man who dreamed up the Imperial Airship Scheme and then relentlessly pushed R101 to her destruction; Princess Marthe Bibesco, the celebrated writer and glamorous socialite with whom he had a long affair; and Herbert Scott, a national hero who had made the first double crossing of the Atlantic in any aircraft in 1919-eight years before Lindbergh's famous flight -- but who devolved into drink and ruin."--From publisher.

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