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Having gotten a sponsorship from Indiana Jones 5, the Rewatchables podcast recently--completely coincidentally, we were assured--discussed Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The best part was Chris Ryan's advocacy for dirigibles as a form of transportation. The film does indeed portray it as the ultimate way to travel. And for most of our lives we've watched the Goodyear and MetLife blimps blithely circle sporting events.

On the other hand, when we were kids Time-Life Audio marketed a set of great radio broadcasts by running non-stop ads featuring the original Herb Morrison call of the Hindenburg disaster with the famous line: "Oh, the humanity". Since it was a tv ad campaign they included footage of the crash, which looked terrifying. Then too, Thomas Harris, of Hannibal Lecter fame, had his first best-seller with Black Sunday, about a terrorist attack on the Super Bowl using a blimp as the delivery system and there was a decent film version made. [Side note: we used to go to Cosmos games at Giants Stadium where the security guys were notorious thugs--eventually beating a Grateful Dead concert-goer to death. When the Stadium banned bringing in bottles I showed up with a bag at the front gate. The guard first asked why I'd brought a baseball mitt: "In case a ball comes into the stands." Then, why a Bible?: "In case I see the blimp coming in low."]

So one is not unprepared to hear that the history of dirigible development and travel was at best checkered. But no one could anticipate what Mr. Gwynne relates here: a relentless catalog of one fiasco after another, each unslowed by the prior. The subtitle of the book gives away the fact that the airship in question is headed for a less than successful adventure, so we'll not worry about spoiler alerts, eh? I'm a big fan of the author, whose Perfect Pass is nearly the only great book about football strategy and whose Hymns of the Republic lays waste to any notions that our Civil War was less brutal and fratricidal than those of other nations. Here he manages to maintain our interest even though we know inevitably what's coming

The secret to his success is three-fold. First, he provides a virtual biography of the central figure in this misadventure, Lord Christopher Birdwood Thomson:
Despite his Cheltenham manners and ministerial calm, Christopher Birdwood Thomson is a man obsessed. He has been the driving force behind a scheme to connect the far-flung outposts of the British Empire through the new medium of the air. He has taken firm hold of the national building program whose purpose is to show the world that it can be done. Flying R101 to India will be the proof. R101 is his baby. Or perhaps more accurately, the spawn of his gauzy, rainbow-inflected vision of a future in which fleets of lighter-than-air ships float serenely through blue imperial skies, linking everything British in a new space- time continuum.
“Travelers will journey tranquilly in air liners to the earth’s remotest parts,” Thomson has written, “visit the archipelagos in southern seas, cruise round the coasts of continents, strike inland, surmount lofty mountain ranges, and follow rivers as yet half unexplored from mouth to source. . . . They will obtain a bird’s-eye view of regions made inaccessible hitherto by deserts, jungles, swamps, and frozen wastes . . . high above the mosquitos and miasmas, and mud and dust and noise. By means of the airship man will crown his conquest of the air.”
These were extravagant promises. But in the fall of 1930, when airplanes are still uncomfortable, dangerous, and in constant need of refueling, Lord Thomson’s vision seems entirely plausible. Planes are short-hoppers, the Lindbergh miracle notwithstanding. Oceangoing ships are irremediably slow. Airships, on the other hand, can span empires, specifically the one belonging to the British, which has grown by a million square miles and 13 million souls since the end of the Great War. “I always fancied the dirigible against the aeroplane for the overhead haulage in the years to come,” wrote Rudyard Kipling, reflecting the fashionable thinking of the day. If Lord Thomson can’t bring the imperial dominions, mandates, protectorates, colonies, and territories closer in space, he can bring them closer in time, which is really the same thing. The interval required for global travel—with regular passenger and mail service—can be reduced from oceangoing weeks to airborne days.
Moreover, he presents Thomson and the British lighter than air service as servants in the grand Imperial project of Great Britain, which gives their ambition and willingness to ignore danger an oddly delusional coherence. The aim was to overawe, but they ultimately overawed themselves.

The delusions make up the second strand of the book. The rigid airship--featuring a metal frame surrounding gas bags--was largely (exclusively?) pioneered in pre-WWI Germany and its theoretical application as a weapon of war was recognized immediately. But, to give the Cliff Notes version, even in development the machines proved not just unreliable but often deadly. And when they were utilized in the War they initially seemed to have some efficacy, since Britain had neither the air defenses nor the planes to counter them and they could bomb pretty much unimpeded. But, as the author recounts, even at this stage the bombings were ineffectual, their targets rarely hit, and control of the zeppelins only marginal at best, while foul weather completely neutralized them. Instead of actual battlefield success, they became tools of propaganda, fooling Germans and Brits alike into believing that they had been useful. Subsequently, when Germany lost the war, the Brits took over the program, which Thomson led.

And there comes the final strand, an almost you-are-there account of the ill-fated vessel, R101, "the world's largest flying machine." :
According to later statements from one witness on the ground, “The wind was very violent and the rain was rather strong. The wind was coming in gusts, a tempest from the southwest, very strong, but not lasting. The wind was in heavy gusts and changing in direction.” Another witness said, “The wind was blowing in squall.” The air temperature is fifty degrees Fahrenheit.
R101 continues to labor forward, going so slowly—twenty mph over ground—that a witness on the ground thinks that she seems “in difficulty.” She has averaged a mere thirty-three mph over the 248 miles they have traveled since leaving Cardington. She is two and one-half hours behind schedule. Her crew will have to do much better if they are to make Lord Thomson’s state dinner in Ismailia.
Nor does Leech witness the change of watch, which happens on schedule at 2:00 a.m. Captain Irwin retires. Second Officer Maurice Steff takes command of the ship. He is the least experienced of R101’s officers. The chief coxswain is the handsome veteran George “Sky” Hunt, who supervises the rudder and elevator coxswains.
In the lounge, Leech, sitting peacefully, feels a massive shift in the unseen world around him. The movement is violent and sudden. In an instant everything in the lounge is moving, including Leech. He is thrown forward. He slides along the settee and comes up hard against the forward bulkhead along with his table, ashtray, glass, and other glasses and the soda siphon.
Because he is in a sealed chamber with no view on the outside world, he has no horizon lines, no landmarks, to tell him what is happening to the ship. But he can feel the world drop away. The airship is in a dive. He tries several times to get to his feet. He has the strong sense that, as he says later, “we must have dived a considerable distance.”
He finally manages to stand and realizes that the sealed container he is in has leveled out. The crashing sounds have stopped. He drags the table back into position, picks up the glasses and soda siphon, and places them back on the table. For a moment—it will not last long—everything again seems right in the world.
Twining them all together, Mr. Gwynne provides us with not just an unknown history but an exciting read. That we hardly know whether to treat the whole history as horrifying or comical simply adds to the fun. At any rate, I'm off the idea of blimp travel for awhile.


(Reviewed:)

Grade: (A)


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History
S. C. Gwynne Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: S. C. Gwynne
    -AUTHOR SITE: scgwynne.com
    -TWITTER: @scgwynne
    -AUTHOR PAGE: S. C. Gwynne (Simon Schuster)
    -VIDEO ARCHIVES: S. C. Gwynne (YouTube)
    -ARCHIVES: S.C. Gwynne (Writer at Large, Texas Monthly)
    -EXCERPT: When One of the World’s Largest Flying Machines Crashed in a French Field: S.C. Gwynne Remembers the Tragic History of the British Airship R101 (S. C. Gwynne, May 22, 2023, LitHub)
    -EXCERPT: MEET THE MAN WHO SENT THE WORLD’S LARGEST FLYING MACHINE TO ITS DOOM: Christopher Birdwood Thomson was determined to fly the R101 airship to India, whether it was ready for the trip or not. (S.C. GWYNNE, 8/2023, HistoryNet)
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-TRIBUTE: Mike Leach, the Madman Who Revolutionized Football: The author of The Perfect Pass and Empire of the Summer Moon reflects on Mike Leach’s coaching legacy. (S.?C. Gwynne, December 14, 2022, Texas Monthly)
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-PODCAST: S.C. Gwynne: His Majesty’s Airship interview by David Wilk (David Wilk, 8/28/23, writerscast)
    -PODCAST: The Aviation Disaster that Ended an Empire – Episode 178 (Flight Safety Detectives)
    -VIDEO INTERVIEW: S.C. Gwynne: Bestselling author and historian S.C. Gwynne joined Book TV to talk and take calls about Native American history, the Civil War, and more. Mr. Guinn’s books include “"Empire of the Summer Moon,” "Rebel Yell," and “His Majesty’s Airship.” (C-SPAN, AUGUST 6, 2023 In Depth)
    -VIDEO LECTURE: S.C. Gwynne presents HIS MAJESTY'S AIRSHIP, with Greg Seltzer (Flyleaf Books, May 3, 2023)
    -VIDEO LECTURE: Author Series | S. C. Gwynne | His Majesty's Airship (Hudson Library & Historical Society, May 10, 2023)
    -PODCAST: S.C. Gwynne on His Majesty's Airship (Keen On, )
    -PODCAST: Authors on Audio: S.C. Gwynne: on His Majesty's Airship (Talmage Boston, July 26, 2023, Washington Independent Review of Books)
    -PODCAST: Authors on Audio: A Conversation with S.C. Gwynne: on Hymns of the Republic (Talmage Boston, November 27, 2019, Washington Independent Review of Books)
    -INTERVIEW: WHAT DO COW INTESTINES HAVE TO DO WITH THE WORLD’S LARGEST FLYING MACHINE?: Author S.C. Gwynne explains it all. (TOM HUNTINGTON5/16/2023, HistoryNet)
    -INTERVIEW: Q&A with S.C. Gwynne (Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb, August 5, 2023)
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-REVIEW ARCHIVES: S. C. Gwynne (Kirkus)
    -ARCHIVES: SC Gwynne (lit Hub)
    -REVIEW: of His Majesty's Airship by S.C. Gwynne (Dominic Green, Wall Street Journal)
    -REVIEW: of His Majesty's Airship (John Lancaster, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of His Majesty's Airship (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of His Majesty's Airship (Deborah Hopkinson, BookPage)
    -REVIEW: of His Majesty's Airship (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of His Majesty's Airship (Business Standard)
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-REVIEW: of Rebel Yell by S.C. Gwynne (Allen C. Guelzo, WSJ)
    -REVIEW: of Rebel Yell (Robert I. Girardi, Washington Independent Review of Books)
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Book-related and General Links:

   
-VIDEO: Hindenburg: The New Evidence (NOVA, 05/19/21, PBS)
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