Titanic of the skies: The forgotten story of an airship disaster

Author Cecilia Thornton tells the story of her Australian grandfather – and the fatal journey he took that led to the death of Britain’s airship industry.

It’s hard to imagine nowadays, when possibly the most well-known airship in the skies is the Goodyear Blimp – but back at the dawn of the 20th century, airships looked to be the future of long-distance travel.

Grand, luxurious, and capable of making extended journeys that aeroplanes at the time could never hope to match, during its golden age in the first few decades of the 1900s, the airship was the “queen of the skies” long before the Boeing 747 was ever dreamed of.

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