October 2024 will mark the 94th anniversary of a disaster that changed the future of travel. On 5 October 1930 the rigid airship the R101 crashed just after 2am near Beauvais in France and immediately caught fire. The largest airship in the world was reduced to a skeleton of metal in minutes.
This crash was during its maiden voyage to India which had begun on 4 October 1930 at Cardington. This disaster stopped airship development in the United Kingdom, 54 men were on board the R101, six survived.
Those onboard comprised thirty-seven crew, five officers, six officials of the Royal Airship Works and six passengers. Many of the crew were veterans of the First World War and had served in the Royal Naval Air Service or the Royal Flying Corps.
Those killed included the Secretary of State for Air, Lord Thomson and Air Vice Marshall Sir Sefton Brancker, on board in his role as Director of Civil Aviation, a post he had held since 1922. Brancker had been at the forefront in promoting aviation in the United Kingdom. The youngest crewman to die was Galley Boy Thomas William Megginson at the age of 18. The oldest First Engineer William Rose Gent at the age of 53.
The R101 was full of comfort for its passengers and was designed to be viewed as the new and futuristic way to travel, to rival cruise ships. It was aimed to improve what was termed the ‘All-Red-Route’, the connections between the British Empire at the time.
Facilities for passengers included a lounge, with aviation images on the walls, fabric covered wicker chairs and settees with space to sit 30 people, a smoking lounge and a dining salon with Royal Airship Works cutlery and table-ware and space for 24 passengers to dine in any one sitting.
The lounge, in an echo to cruise ships had raised verandas and a handrail which passengers could lean against and view the outside of the airship via safety glass.
Many newspapers covered the mass funeral for the victims. The Sunday Pictorial (later to become The Sunday Mirror) produced a ‘R101 Funeral Memorial Number’.
The bodies of the crew and passengers were brought back to England via special trains and on the 10
October, these men seen as pioneers of exploration, were given full state honours and carried in state from Victoria Station to Westminster Hall where they were placed in the Palace of Westminster. 48 coffins, each draped with a Union Jack.
Thousands of people lined up and filed past to pay their respects, at one time the queue stretched some two miles. A double decker bus brought the bereaved families from Cardington, Bedfordshire (where the R101 was built and launched from) to the Memorial Service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. This service was
attended by the Prime Minister and HRH The Prince of Wales.
The following day the coffins were carried through the crowded silent streets of London to Euston and there onwards to Bedford. The 48 coffins were placed in a mass grave at the parish church of St. Mary, Cardington. The Royal Air Force ensign flown from the tail of the R101 is still viewable in the church today.