Kenneth Deacon <kendea@speed-mail.co.uk>
Howden's
Airship Station
Covers the history of the RNAS at Howden from 1915 until today.
Few people outside the small market town of Howden know that
the R100 was the successful airship and it was the R101which
failed and crashed in France. The aim of this book is to try
and piece together the story of Howden's Royal Naval Airship
Station in World War One. The station that once housed the
largest airship shed in the world, and was the birthplace
of the R100 airship.
It covers the successes and disasters that befell some of
the airships based there. The ups and downs of the airship
station, and the story of the Barnes Wallis designed R100
airship in the 1920s. The book explains the need for
an airship station to be built at Howden. How the "Howden
Pigs" contained the U-boat threat to the east coast ports
in World War One. How the people of Howden dealt with the
crash of the R38 airship that broke up over Hull in 1921.
The revolutionary experiments carried out using the R33 airship.
How the R34, after her successful Trans-Atlantic flight was
destroyed at Howden. The part that the famous author Nevil
Shute, who lived in Howden for three years at the start of
his writing
career played in the building of the R100 airship. And, away
from airships, it tells of the Burney "Steamline"car,
designed at Howden by Sir Dennis Burney, shaped as an airship
and once owned by the Prince of Wales in the 1930s. What it
was like to live on the station in the 1920's and in the 50's.
What remains today of this once massive airship station.
The book can be purchased from Langrick Publications
at 8 Langrick Ave. Howden East Yorkshire DN14 7SN at the price
of £3.95 plus £1.00 postage and packing. Make
cheques/postal orders payable to Langrick Publications.
John Grant Fuller
The Airmen Who Would Not Die
New York -- Putnam --1979 --ISBN: 0399122648
Fascinating story of the "Titanic of the Air," the English
luxury dirigible R-101 that crashed in 1930. Some claim a
cover up for the cause of the crash. Fuller claims the cover
up was used because "The testimony detailing the death agonies
of the R-101 came from a courageous psychic's contact with
the airmen who had died in the flames!" The psychic was Eileen
Garrett. Also involved in this fascinating research are Harry
Price and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, among many others. Berkley
paperback.
George Whale (Late Major, R.A.F.):
British
Airships, Past / Present / Future
London and New York -- John Lane Company -- 1919
Full online text via the Gutenburg Project. A compact, though
very informative, history of airships in general with detailed
history of early British airships.