Sky Sailors The story of the World's Airshipmen by Mowthorpe. Ces,

Hard back book with colour pictorial dust jacket, 174 pages, 12 chapters, illustrated with numerous B/W plates, appendices, index.

This is the untold story of the 'sky sailors'-the men who pioneered a mode of air transport that today is virtually forgotten. During the first two decades of aviation pioneering (1890-1910), airshipmen hugely outnumbered aeroplane pioneers. But the great innovations in heavier-than-air aircraft, the advent of two world wars, and the bad publicity brought about by a small number of horrific airship disasters, changed the picture completely. It is only proper that, before time expunges all traces of these intrepid pioneers, their exploits are placed on record.

The author describes the early days of airships and their brave crews, mixing narrative with first-hand accounts by airshipmen from England, Germany, Italy and the USA. His account begins in Paris in the 1890s, and moves on to examine the development of British and German military airships in the First World War (Blimps and Zeppelin-type rigids); the interwar development of rigid airships by Britain and Germany; the Americans' use of massive airships to carry aircraft, and smaller airships for anti-submarine patrols in the Atlantic and Pacific during the Second World War; the use of airships by smaller, civilian operators; and the fatal disasters of the Hindenberg, R101 and Shenandoah.