The Millionth Chance: The Story of the R. 101. Illustrated.

London: Hamish Hamilton, (1957). First Edition. Octavo, blue boards (hardcover), gilt letters, 176 pp. Near-Fine, with bookplate; in a Very Good, mylar protected dust jacket with light edgewear. From dust jacket: At six-thirty on the evening of Saturday, ,4th October, 1930, a crowd of thousands, who had waited all day in the biting wind at Cardington airfield, near Bedford, cheered the R-101, the greatest airship ever built, as she slipped her moorings and headed for France on the first stage of her voyage to Egypt and India. Six years in the building, (truncated) and larger than the Mauretania, the R-101 was to inaugurate a regular airship service round the Empire. Nothing it was said, could approach her in terms of design and safety. Lord Thomson, the Labour Government’s Air Minister, who was on board, had often said: “She’s as safe as a house -- except for the millionth chance.” That night, the millionth chance came up. At 2.5 a.m., the R-101 had crashed on a hillside near Beauvais, a mass of white-hot girders that looked like the bones of some gigantic celestial fish. Of the fifty-odd people who had set out on the voyage only a half a dozen survived. In this book James Leasor has set out the strange and compelling story of te building of this great vessel; the race against time and sound advice so that, untested with a full load, the R-101 could fly to India and return in time for Lord Thomson to attend the Imperial Conference. It is a story of courage and doubts -- if Lord Thomson felt so confident, why did he insure himself and make his will the night before the flight? -- a story of triumphs and a last disaster that still contained the seeds of glory. For, once all official research had been withdrawn from airships after the failure of the R-101, it was applied with more vigour to heaveier-than-air machines; those which, ten year later, were to fight and win the Battle of Britain. (Inventory #: 60967bd)