The Airmen who Would Not Die

Fuller turns his attention to the historic crash of the great British dirigible R101, the luxury lighter-than-air behemoth that was to revolutionize travel in the 1930s. The story starts in 1928 when a monoplane carrying famed WW1 ace Captain Raymond Hinchcliffe and his copilot, the heiress-actress Elise Mackay, vanishes without a trace over the stormy Atlantic. As news of the disappearance makes headlines around the world, British workers race to complete the largest and most advanced airship yet designed, the monumental R101. Amid psychic warnings of disaster ahead, which include a seance with author Conan Doyle in which the lost Hinchcliffe warns the navigator of R101 of its various structural problems, the airship takes off on schedule. It crashes on the French side of the channel killing all but six of the 54 aboard. In a later seance, the commander of the airship recounts in horrible detail the anguished end of R101 and those aboard...