Zeppelin Mania: R34’s Flight Home Day 1

R 34 Flying Just Above Dense Clouds On The Outskirts of a Depression.
This illustration shows a typical cloud horizon.
(From General Maitland’s published logbook.)

All good things must come to an end, so it is said. For 3 days the crew of the R34 have partied hearty. However, bad weather was on the horizon and Major Scott makes the decision to take off and head for home before the forecast storm hits.

From General Maitland’s log:

Time 11.30 p.m. (New York summer time)—It is very dark, and the wind is gusting up to thirty miles per hour on the ground.

Our final preparations are made in the ghostly light of powerful searchlights.

We have made hosts of friends during our three wonderful days in America, and they are all here on the ground to see us off.

11.40 p.m.—Last farewells. Crew are all aboard and Scott releases ballast to ensure the ship being light when starting. At the last moment another bag of mails and a case of rum are thrown in through the open window of the forward car.

11.54 p.m. (July 9th, New York summer time, or 3.54 a.m., July 10th, Greenwich mean time).—Away.

A great cheer comes up to us as we rise into the sky and steer straight for New York…

Again that strange feeling of loneliness—as sudden as it is transient.

And the R34 is away! Motoring into the night sky on her way from Long Island to the heart of the Big Apple.

[Note:—While in the midst of last minute research, I made the most wonderful discovery: The Log of H.M.A. R34: Journey to America and Back by Air-Commodore E.M. Maitland.

What an exciting find! The book is available online and in ebook form at https://archive.org/details/logofhmajourney00maitrich

General Maitland, with wit, humor, and an eye to the poetic, gives us a most extraordinary travelogue. This book is his actual log that he kept almost minute by minute on the R34’s voyage to America and back. The publishing of he log in 1920 is made all the more important by the fact General Maitland died in the R38 tragedy the following year. His death was a huge blow to the British rigid airship program.

For me, having relied on a host of secondary sources for my accounting of the voyage, the discovery of his log emphasized the importance of primary sources in research. For according to General Maitland, the rough journey depicted in the secondary sources of the flight to America simply wasn’t the case. There were only a couple episodes of violent movement, according to Maitland. At all other times the ship’s movements were slow and deliberate. Nothing like a storm-tossed ship on the sea. He makes numerous comments of never feeling “seasick” or more appropriately, as he noted, “airsick”.

However, not being able to find the source of the “rough” journey stories, I must consider the political aspects. General Maitland was a dyed in the wool airshipman. He wrote numerous times of the future airliners and what the R34’s flight demonstrated was needed in them. His job was to make an assessment of the feasibility of long-distance airship travel. Could it be the General “softened” his account of the actual conditions? Possible. After all, he needed to convince the Air Ministry bureaucrats that airliners were not only possible but desirable.

So where did my secondary sources get their “rough” journey information? Perhaps newspaper accounts drawn from the crew members, who may have exaggerated the dangers to make themselves look even more heroic and to please the journalists looking for a hot story.

Whatever the case, and hopefully I can find out by the time of the R34’s centenary in 2019, do read the log. It is an exciting and extraordinary travelogue. An adventure back in time as well as to a fantasy land that exists above the clouds.]

There is more to come as the R34 makes her way home to Britain. So stay tuned for tomorrow’s adventure!

R 34 moored out at Mineola. Viewed by searchlight.
(From the published logbook of General Maitland.)

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