Nostalgia: Soaring in city's skies

Published on Saturday 5 September 2009 11:31

AN old woman, disturbed at the fireside of her Blackford home, was heard to mutter: "Is that the Zepps back again?" as the R101 airship made a surprise visit to Edinburgh in November 1929.

The roar of the engines – far more clanking, apparently, than the hum of an airplane – brought hundreds out on the streets of the city, as the rigid airship, only completed by British government engineers earlier that year, flew over Edinburgh in the early evening, her low altitude providing an easy spectacle.

It was not, as the unnamed old woman pointed out, the first Zeppelin to be seen over the city, as the Evening News of the time reported. "The airship approached the city by the same course as that followed by the Zeppelin in 1916 when the first incendiary bomb was dropped on Leith and a warehouse burst into lurid flames."

But, it went on: "There was no suggestion of sinister stealth about this visit."

In fact, the zig-zag route across the city and the airship's lack of height – less than 1,000ft over Corstorphine – meant the streets were thronged and thousands got a good view. "Seen steering steadily in the sky against the background of the clouds with lights blazing and figures visible occasionally at the windows of the saloon, she seemed like a vision from a fantastic dream," reported the News.

Sadly, the government's entire Imperial Airship Scheme, begun back in 1924, was to end in a nightmare. The R101 crashed on its first overseas flight less than a year after this picture was taken, in October 1930, killing 48 people, effectively ending British involvement in airships.

But ideas of how to travel through the air faster or just in more luxury have continued ever since.

Today, the world's largest commercial airliner, the 525-seat Airbus A380, is scheduled to make its first flying visit to Scotland. The aircraft is scheduled to perform approach-and-go fly-throughs at Edinburgh airport, as well as Prestwick, before touring the rest of the UK.

It's due to be flying over Edinburgh Airport at 1:40pm today – the latest in long line of magnificent flying machines to have visited the city, from the Zeppelin, through to Vulcan bombers and Concorde.