In the end, both sectors would get their chance. Everyone agreed that that would be a good thing debate arose, however, over the question of whether Government or private enterprise should lead the effort. So in 1924 the British Airship Programme undertook the production of a state-of-the-art British airship in an effort to close the technology gap. Dirigibles seemed the way of the future.įrustratingly for British engineers, Germany, the vanquished power in the Great War, was outdoing the victors in developing the new technology. But in the years following World War I, such technology was more than cutting edge it was still an unfulfiled dream of a new generation of designers.Ĭonventional aircraft had proved their reliability during the war, but they guzzled petrol and carried such small loads that their commercial potential looked very limited.

Still, with a determination that went beyond courage into the realm of foolhardiness, the airship’s creators pressed on rather than admit defeat.įrom the perspective of the 21st century, lighter-than-air transportation evokes images of lumbering, unwieldy craft resembling, in size as well as manoeuvrability, nothing so much as a beached whale. The crash of the R101 airship, unlike the sinking of RMS Titanic 18 years earlier, was not a case of an unthinkable and unexpected tragedy but one that many people must have anticipated.

IT ISN’T EASY PUSHING FORWARD the frontiers of technology, but sometimes overcoming old-fashioned human pride proves an even greater challenge. HULTON/ARCHIVE BY GETTY IMAGES A rare photograph of R1 01 in flight, soaring over St.

Lighter Than Air by Rodney Charles