“These writers [Neon and Spanner] have told us a great length, and with crocodile tears in their eyes, that vast sums of public money have been thrown away in these futile attempts to build airships. Well, well, it does seem pretty obvious that the wrong sort of people were playing at airships. Why in heaven’s name did they not leave the job to the men of practical experience? Of course, great sums of money were spent. Why not? Experiments cannot be carried out with the expenditure of vast sums of money without the sacrifice of a few lives. This is true of every sphere of progress.”

Another one…

“Our own post-war experiments have been carried out by experts in battleship design, not by practical and experienced airship men. Therein, largely speaking, lies our failure. I might hazard a guess as to the identity of “Neon,” but it would lead us nowhere. But, Mr Spanner is a naval architect. He ought to know why these airship experiments failed. Was he not a member of the department that designed them? If so, he surely helped to spend the vast sums of money on these post-war failures?”

As I said, it’s a great read and quite an enjoyable rant in places. I’d say it’s a must-read for you. Interesting timing too coming as the book is written post the loss of R101, Akron but before the loss of Macon and the Hindenburg.

Thanks for the feedback on the NS11 – now with a much more memorable URL. Best viewed in anything other than Internet Explorer! Let me know if you come across anything NS-related.

Cheers

Peter

By the way, that’s a fabulous website you have there.