BATTLEBAGS British Airships of the First World War by Mowthorpe. Ces,

Soft cover book with colour pictorial cover, 194 pages, 10 chapters, illustrated with B/W plates, appendices, bibliography and sources, index.

Battlebags is the culmination of more than thirty years research and is the first book to record and describe in detail every single airship built or used by Great Britain during the First World War. Affectionately named 'battlebags' by their crews and 'pigs' by the local civilian inhabitants, Royal Naval Air Service airships were a familiar sight around Britain's shores. At least 226 airships of all types were built and operated by the Royal Navy during the war in a bid to beat the deadly German U-boat menace.

The author describes the development of the airship in the years leading up to the First World War and the part it was destined to play in the years that followed. The background to each class is given together with details of individual airships, including where they were built and stationed, their known crews, plus technical information and particulars of notable flights and total hours flown.