The British Airship at War, 1914 - 1918 by Abbott. Patrick,

Hardback book with colour pictorial dust wrapper, 152 pages, with B/W plates and illustrations throughout,  maps to endpapers, index.

“When war broke out in August, 1914, Britain possessed only seven military air- ships, all owned by the Admiralty. During four years of war, however, no fewer than 225 were built, and 107 of them were still in commission at the time of the Armistice. Lumbering and apparently unwieldy though they were, these airships played a very significant role in defeating the U-boats, which with their unrestricted warfare on merchant ships at one time threatened to bring Britain to her knees. Twenty-seven enemy submarines were attacked by airships, and of these several were certainly destroyed.”

Such figures do not tell the whole story, for as Patrick Abbott points out, it was the deterrent value of the airship operations that counted most; only one ship was ever torpedoed while escorted by an airship.

The cover illustration of a Coastal airship attacking a submerging U-boat is from a painting by C. E. Hall.