On
October 4th, 1930, the pride of British aeronautical engineering,
the Airship R101, left England on its maiden journey, a non-stop flight to
India. The weather was far from good, and as the R101 crossed the Channel she
was tossed and buffeted by ever stronger gusts of wind. Visibility was reduced
to nil, and the airship, travelling at about 1000 feet bucked in unintentional
swoops, losing 200 – 300 feet at a time. The crew were hardly able to correct
these traumatic movements. And so it was
that at precisely 2.05 a.m. the gigantic ship crashed at the edge of a wood
near Beauvais in Northern France, and burst into flames.
The
R101 was a massive 777 feet long, and required 5˝ million cubic feet of
hydrogen to give it sufficient lift. The trouble with that was the inflammatory
nature of this gas, which caused a huge surge of flame shooting some 300 feet
into the air. Beneath the ship there was a gondola with 54 people on board.
Only six survived the inferno. The R101 was the pride of British aviation, and
the gondola had been supplied with all the amenities of an ocean liner.
Travelling on board were Lord Thomson, Secretary of State for Air, and Sir Sefton
Brancker, Director of Civil Aviation, and the R101’s Captain, Flight Lieutenant
Carmichael Irwin. All three were killed.
This
tragedy occurred just 18 years after the sinking of the Titanic. Both had been
advertised as the pride of British engineering. In both instances, pride came
before a fall. Furthermore, in both instances there were strange premonitions,
dreams, and occult connections. We have already spoken about Morgan Robertson,
W.T.Stead, and Celia Thaxter in connection with the Titanic. It must now be
revealed that in 1925, whilst the R101 was still in its design stage, Sir
Sefton Brancker had visited an astrologer, who told him that there was nothing
to be seen in his life after six years. Further investigations revealed that
when Walter Radcliffe, a rigger who flew in the ship, left home that morning of
October 4th, his young son began to cry, saying, “I haven’t got a
daddy.” By the following morning, this was sadly true. A friend who carried the
sad news to Mrs Irwin was met with her strange comment, “It’s all right. You
needn’t worry. I know. We both knew he wasn’t coming back again.”
Most
disturbing of all the incidents reported was the information apparently
received by a Mrs Eileen Garrett, a medium, who during a trance spoke with a man’s
voice. The name “Irwin” was mentioned. The voice listed technical defects that
were not known publicly until the following year, when the results of the
official enquiry were published.
We
do not publish these occult happenings as though to recognise and endorse such
activities. Our purpose has been to expose the prior circumstances which, we
believe, gave the Dark Powers the authority they needed to sink the Titanic,
and to destroy the R101. The lesson to learn, in retrospect, is that human
bombastic pride is calculated to play into the hands of Satan. Nebuchadnezzar
learned this the hard way, after his pompous declaration about “Great Babylon”
which he had built. He was put out to grass for seven years until he repented.
Likewise Herod Agrippa, who encouraged the crowds to address him as a Divinity,
dropped dead, and was eaten by worms. These examples, from Scripture, are
tokens of Divine Judgement. We were sad to hear, during a recent Presidential
Election in America, candidates were proclaiming, “The United States is the
greatest nation on the face of the earth.” The word “Great” is used of Babylon
in the Book of Revelation, but the New Jerusalem is referred to as “The Holy
City.”
The
tragedy of the R101 put paid to any further progress in the manufacture of
airships in Britain. In the Unites States the Shenandoah and the Akron
were lost in 1933. The Germans, however, continued their research. They had
been the major user of airships since 1900, when Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin
built them extensively. These Zeppelins had carried some 35,000
passengers without mishap. Then eventually they built the Hindenburg, a massive 812 feet in length. But this also
ended in disaster, when it exploded at Lakehurst, New Jersey, USA, in 1937,
marking the end of airship travel.