Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Daily History Picture: Catching an Airship February 3, 2017

This picture (1929) is normally shows because it was the last voyage of the airship in question: things ended badly… Beach was fascinated by how they got on.

Andrew Z writes, 30 Mar 2017: Your picture of the R101 at its mooring mast reminded me of something I’d read recently in the book “Airship” by John Swinfield (quick review: writing style a bit clumsy at times, needs to go into the controversies in more depth rather than just describing them, but still plenty of interesting material). It contains extracts from the diary of the R101’s First Officer in which he complains about the disruption caused by parties of dignitaries being taken on board to be wined and dined while the airship was still under construction and tethered at its mooring mast. The author notes that after one visit by a party of MPs “stories circulated that some of the MPs were so drunk that they thought they actually had been flying – they even spoke of how much they had enjoyed their voyage”. Clearly some things never change! Finally, here’s a genuine photograph of a mooring mast mishap involving the airship USS Los Angeles in 1927 – a gust of wind lifted the tail and the crew had to climb up the keel to the stern to use their body weight to bring it back down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Los_Angeles_(ZR-3)#/media/File:Zr3nearvertical.jpg