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No one who witnessed these monsters in flight could forget them, great silver ships of the sky droning majestically overhead. Not content with the waves, Britannia was intent on ruling the air.

But within sight of the sheds is another monument, in the church of St Mary. It commemorates the 48 men who perished when the R101, in her time the biggest airship in the world, crashed in October 1930 during her maiden overseas voyage to Karachi. Only six men survived when the airship ploughed into a hill near Beauvais, in northern France, the vast bubble of hydrogen within her hull bursting into flames.

The dead included Lord Thomson, Secretary of State for Air, who had pushed for R101’s too-rapid entry into service. Flaws in her construction, combined with poor weather, contributed to the disaster. The death toll was higher than that on the Hindenburg in 1937 and the R101’s equally spectacular – but un-filmed and therefore less well-known – demise spelt the end of the British civil airship programme. R100, a rival design conceived by Barnes Wallis, was scrapped despite a successful return flight to Canada. Silence descended on the hangars at Cardington.

This article has already failed a test set by Mike Durham, Britain’s foremost designer of airships. “I’m going to give a prize to the first journalist to write about this project without mentioning the Hindenburg,” he says. “I’m sure I won’t have to award one.”

Mr. Durham is talking about the huge, white, whale-like creature behind him in Cardington’s Number One Hangar. At last, the spiritual home of British airship-building is back in business.