The hubris of the great airship designers

Tribal rivalries have existed from humanity’s beginning and have fuelled the creation of every prestigious monument ever built. By the Age of Science we were building not pyramids but ironclads and submarines fighting for ascendancy at sea, expanding our empires in spite of an ever-growing movement for colonial independence. The Spanish-American war of 1898 added the United States to the list of great nations believing it to be their destiny, even duty, to bring their kind of progress to the world.

Many understood that achieving overwhelming technological power as a nation guaranteed that no antagonist would dare attack. Limited by agreements made after the first world war, Britain no longer ruled the waves. Like France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the USA, we saw aerial supremacy as our best means of extending and consolidating national influence. Britain’s empire had actually grown larger and more difficult to run. There were weaknesses everywhere.  Transport and communications were paramount concerns of trade, administration, the military and national prestige.  

The airship race of the 1920s and 1930s carried that familiar mixture of visionary idealism, populist politics and wishful thinking which so often ended in tragedy.