The Airmen Who Would Not Die by John G. [Grant] Fuller lands on the shelves of my shop, where it will be found in my Transport Air section.
London: Souvenir Press, 1979, (First Edition) Hardback in dust wrapper.
Contains: Black & white photographs;
From the cover: Stranger and even more compelling than his best-selling The Ghost of Flight 401, John G. Fullers The Airmen Who Would Not Die investigates the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the historic crash of the great British airship R101, the luxury lighter-than-air behemoth that was to revolutionise travel in the 1930s.
Fullers spellbinding tale begins in 1928 when a monoplane carrying World War 1 ace Captain Raymond Hinchliffe and his co-pilot, the flamboyant heiress-actress Elsie MacKay, vanished without a trace over the stormy Atlantic. As news of the disappearance made front-page headlines around the world, British workers raced to complete the largest and most advanced airship yet designed, the monumental R101. Neither medium Eileen Garretts terrifying pre-vision of a dirigible tragedy, nor an even more fearful warning from the dead Captain Hinchliffe himself to another spiritualist, Mrs. Ear], was able to delay the much-publicised take-off of the RI01 for India. Finally, in a last-minute séance that included both women and the already famous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Hinchliffe warned the navigator of the RIO I about its unresolved structural problems.
In defiance of all the portents, the 777-foot RI01 took off on schedule and plunged to the ground on the French side of the Channel, killing all but six of the fifty-four on board.
But the disaster did not mark the end of this astonishing tale. For two days later, through another séance, the commander of the ill-fated airship was to recount in horrible detail the anguished end of the R101 and its crew.
Bristling with suspense and astonishing evidence concerning the validity of psychic phenomena, The Airmen Who Would Not Die is a riveting account of a human tragedy and the superhuman events surrounding it.
Very Good in Good Dust Wrapper. A little rubbing to the edges of the dust wrapper which is sunned at the spine. Text complete, clean and tight.
Black boards with Silver titling to the Spine. 360 pages. Index. Bibliography. 9½” x 6¼”.
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