Fatal Flight audiobook: Chapter Two: Airborne at Last (4/14)

Download this audiobook, view the figures in the print version, or read the appendices at www.engineerguy.com/airship. Fatal Flight: The True Story of Britain's Last Great Airship is written by Bill Hammack and read by the author.
Fatal Flight brings vividly to life the year of operation of R.101, the last great British airship-a luxury liner three and a half times the length of a 747 jet, with a spacious lounge, a dining room that seated fifty, glass-walled promenade decks, and a smoking room. The British expected R.101 to spearhead a fleet of imperial airships that would dominate the skies as British naval ships, a century earlier, had ruled the seas. The dream ended when, on its demonstration flight to India, R.101 crashed in France, tragically killing nearly all aboard.
Combining meticulous research with superb storytelling, Fatal Flight guides us from the moment the great airship emerged from its giant shed-nearly the largest building in the British Empire-to soar on its first flight, to its last fateful voyage. The full story behind R.101 shows that, although it was a failure, it was nevertheless a supremely imaginative human creation. The technical achievement of creating R.101 reveals the beauty, majesty, and, of course, the sorrow of the human experience.
The narrative follows First Officer Noel Atherstone and his crew from the ship’s first test flight in 1929 to its fiery crash on October 5, 1930. It reveals in graphic detail the heroic actions of Atherstone as he battled tremendous obstacles. He fought political pressures to hurry the ship into the air, fended off Britain’s most feted airship pilot, who used his influence to take command of the ship and nearly crashed it, and, a scant two months before departing for India, guided the rebuilding of the ship to correct its faulty design. After this tragic accident, Britain abandoned airships.
Set against the backdrop of the British Empire at the height of its power in the early twentieth century, Fatal Flight portrays an extraordinary age in technology, fueled by humankind’s obsession with flight.
This audio recording is released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike Non-Commercial License.
Book Metadata
Publisher Articulate Noise Books | [e-mail]
Hardcover | ISBN 978-1-945441-01-1
eBook | ISBN 978-1-945441-02-8
Paper | ISBN 978-1-945441-03-5
Audiobook | ISBN 978-1-945441-04-2
Audience 01 - General Trade
Subjects
HIS015070 HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / 20th Century
TEC002000 TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Aeronautics & Astronautics
TEC056000 TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / History
SCI034000 SCIENCE / History

[@dayradebaugh]

Enjoying your book, Bill. Very interesting and well written. We've studied this disaster in my engineering ethics classes at Wichita State. I'd also comment that your reading of the text is paced well. Too many audio books are read at a pace much slower than necessary.

[@antonxtr]

Subscribed to the podcast version of the audiobook via Beyond Pod Android. Super convenient! Thank you!

[@scottb721]

Loving the book. Just a friendly correction. Gippsland in Australia, The g is pronounced as in game or ghost, not as a j like jam

[@engineerguyvideo]

+Scott Brownlie thx for kind words. Didn't know which way to say Gippsland ... think I had a recording of both ... now lets hope dandenong wasn't botched too badly!

[@scottb721]

engineerguy happy to report that you got Dandenong perfect. But Melbourne catches everyone out. It's more of a bn sound rather than bourne.

[@kahlzun]

Mell-bin!

[@CptMikeTango1]

It looks like a solar airship with all those black patterns on top

[@homefront3162]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️