Airmen Would Not Die

ISBN: 0399122648

Author: Random House Books for Young Readers

Stranger and even more compelling than his best-selling The Ghost of Flight 401, journalist John G. Fuller turns his talents to the historic crash of the great British dirigible R101, the luxury lighter-than-air behemoth that was to revolutionize travel in the 1930s.

The complex and absolutely spell-binding tale begins in 1928 when a monoplane carrying famed World War I ace Captain Raymond Hinchliffe and his copilot, the flamboyant heiress-actress Elsie Mackay, vanishes without a trace over the stormy Atlantic. As news of the disappearance makes front-page headlines around the world, British workers race to complete the largest and most advanced airship yet designed, the monumental R101. Neither medium Eileeen Garrett's terrifying pre-vision of a dirigible tragedy, nor an even more fearful warning from the dead captain Hinchliffe to another mystic, Mrs. Earl, are held as grounds for delaying the much-publicized launch of the R101 for India. Finally, in a seance that includes both women and the world-famous author Conan Doyle, Hinchliffe warns the navigator of the R101 of its various structural problems.

Despite these warnings, the 777-foot R101 takes off on schedule - and plunges to the ground on the French side of the Channel, killing all but six of the fifty-four aboard. But the disaster does not mark the end of this mind-boggling tale. Two days later, through another seance, the commander of the ill-fated airship recounts in horrible detail the anguished end of the R101 and its crew. Bristling with suspense and astonishing evidence concerning the validity of psychic phenomena, The Airmen Who Would Not Die is a riveting account of a human tragedy and the superhuman events surrounding it.