This is John Batchelor, a happy conversation with S. C. Gwynn, his new book, His Majesty's Airship,

the life and tragic death of the world's largest flying machine, the date the 1920s, R101.

And here, Mr. Gwynne explains very carefully that the British mean meant to make this and did make this, the showpiece of empire, the Roodiard Kipling Empire, spanning the world.

Not only the Royal Navy, the Royal Royal Flying Corps, led by R101, the largest rigid airship ever launched, and its

unhappy conclusion.

Tonight, much more of this in detail, and here's the author explaining how R101 was loaded

with the top of the top of the top of the technology of the moment.

R101 was going to be an entirely new thing.

As we said before, you know, Zeppelin's were invented, the rigid airships, rather, were invented by Ferdinand Van Zeple in 1900,

used extensively in World War

1, which was also a great theater to illustrate their problems, which is that they all went

down in flames, most of them. But R101, so as you said, there's a capitalist airship and the

socialist steership. The socialist airship was, here, we're going to give you X amount of money,

do it for that money.

R101 was what we'd call cost plus.

It was like Vickers, it was whatever you wanted.

And they just loaded it with technology.

And it was meant to be a flagship of empire.

It was meant to demonstrate, you know, if you look back on the British Empire, it's kind of built on the, you know,

the pounding greased piston of British technology, you know, better engines, better guns,

better ships, better, everything technologically better. The British wanted to do this again,

and R101 was going to be that. And so we have things, for example, diesel engines were very heavy.

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