R34 airship makes first trans-Atlantic return

At the beginning of the First World War, Britain commissioned a series of airships for military use. Among these was the R34, spanning the length of two football fields and costing an estimated £350,000.

By the time the Clyde-built R34 was complete, however, the war had ended and the Admiralty instead agreed to lend her to the Air Ministry for air-travel experiments. In July 1919, she became the first airship to make a return journey across the Atlantic in a feat described by The Engineer as a ’triumph for British aeronautics’.

The journey was made under the command of Major GH Scott and from the East Fortune Aerodrome at 1.48am on 2 July. Hours into the flight, the first incident took place when it was discovered that a stowaway had crept on board and hidden between the girders and the gas bags inside the hull.