I bought this as part of the background material for a paper I was writing on the history of meteorological flying, and I'd come across references to the R101, which I knew a little about, but I decided not enough.
What it is is a "tarted up" presentation of the 1931 parliamentary investigation into the loss of the R101 airship. I found the couple of bits of information I was looking for, but then got absolutely gripped by this narrative of a piece of history I didn't know enough about. And a brilliantly presented narrative it is - which for me as an aeronautical engineer gave some really fascinating insights into the history of my field.
Sooner or later I'll end up writing my own analysis of this, I got so fascinated by this, and it'll be a valuable exercise to try lining this up against what are considered best practice in flight testing, structural analysis and a dozen other topics. Certainly we'll not see the day again where a Captain gives instructions to his three coxswains (elevator, rudder, and engine), and that they then pass their instructions onto their various specialists spread around the aircraft. Nor, one hopes, when anybody puts all the senior managers of the design team on board for a flight trial. But there are clearly other things in here which still hold valuable lessons for the aviation community.
Could it be improved? Well probably by addition of better imagery, but then it wouldn't be the authentic 1931 report, and nor would it be so cheap and thus accessible. Whether it would benefit from some later and thinking, particularly post WW2 when the science of aeronautics had developed so far so quickly, is also possible. So, 4/5 - I' give it 4.5/5 if I could.
