I've always been rather intrigued by the figure of Major G.H, Scott, who died on board the airship R101 when she crashed at Beauvais. As a teenager I was fascinated by the airship story, and read several times James Leasor's book 'The Millionth Chance'. Later I read Sir Peter Masefield's 'To Ride the Storm'. Only when I learned to fly myself did I fully appreciate how dangerous those behemoths were.
But back to Major Scott. While neither of these books is about him, he features quite prominently in both. He has always seemed an interesting man in that as well as being an airship pilot he clearly was an engineer of some ingenuity and I also get the impression that he was quite a powerful political advocate of the rigid airship. He seems to have been a strong character and, although these impressions are not always valid, his photographs appear to show a charismatic person. And his achievement in skippering the first rigid airship across the Atlantic, indeed a double crossing, was tremendous. It is a shame it is so little known today.
But he personally also seems to have been a controversial figure. His Wikipedia
entry, perhaps unkindly, itemises the landing accidents which he was associated with, largely sourced from Sir Peter and Neville Shute Norway. The suggestion is that even in the culture of the RAF of the 1920's he was regarded as 'a press-on type', which would mean being extremely daring by modern standards. He does also appear to have, at the very least, participated in conflicts over command, or CRM as we would now say, on the R101 and other airships. The suggestion which Sir Peter made was that after releasing from her mast on her last voyage, the R101 had cruised locally for some time before setting off on her fateful flight. Sir Peter suggested that this might have been a time when Irwin, the ship's captain, and Scott as 'officer in command on the flight', debated whether or not to continue with the flight in the face of obviously rapidly deteriorating meteorological conditions. His suggestion was that Scott would have over-ridden the ship's captain's decision to return to the mast.
In 'To Ride the Storm' Sir Peter implied that there was more which could have been said about Major Scott, but which wasn't. There are implications of drinking and also hints of illness or personal difficulties in the accounts which I have read too - perhaps mostly obliquely or by implication or omission. I wonder if there is more to this story - perhaps more of a personal tragedy? I'm not asking this out of prurience or to suggest any slur on a brave man who died a tragic and premature death. But in our day and age I think we can accept that people are multi-faceted - our heroes can have flaws. Was there some personal or medical contributor to the apparent - and alleged - deterioration in Scott's decision making? Or are these suggestions groundless and simply attempts to rationalise a particularly assertive and 'press-on' kind of man? Or indeed to offload posthumous blame on the dead?
I toy with the idea, if granted a lot of leisure, of one day writing a biography of Scott simply to set the record straight (if I know what 'the record' really is) and perhaps to bring out a more rounded portrait of a man of that time. As he left four children behind when he died, he may well have children or grandchildren alive today who may retain a lot of information about their father / grandfather.
I post this having read the recent postings about British rigids with great interest and to see what fellow-Ppruners think of these idea.