The Airmen Who Would Not Die

Stranger and even more compelling than his best-selling Ghost of Flight 401, journalist John G. Fuller turns his talents to the historic crash of the great British dirigible R 101, the luxury lighter-than-air behemoth that was to revolutionize travel in the 1930's. Two days after the crash, through a séance, the dead commander of the airship recounted in horrible detail the anguished end of the R 101 and its crew. According to Charles H. Gibbs-Smith formerly Lindbergh Professor of Aerospace History, National Air and Space Museum (Smithsonian Institution) "This book had to be written...It will become a prime source for evidence of human survival after death."

Stranger and even more compelling than his best-selling Ghost of Flight 401, journalist John G. Fuller turns his talents to the historic crash of the great British dirigible R 101, the luxury lighter-than-air behemoth that was to revolutionize travel in the 1930's. Two days after the crash, through a séance, the dead commander of the airship recounted in horrible detail the anguished end of the R 101 and its crew. According to Charles H. Gibbs-Smith formerly Lindbergh Professor of Aerospace History, National Air and Space Museum (Smithsonian Institution) "This book had to be written...It will become a prime source for evidence of human survival after death." The complex and absolutely spell-binding tale begins in 1928 when a monoplane carrying famed World War I ace Captain Raymond Hinchliffe and his copilot, the flamboyant heiress-actress Elsie Mackay, vanishes without a trace over the stormy Atlantic. As news of the disappearance makes front-page headlines around the world, British workers race to complete the largest and most advanced airship yet designed, the monumental R 101. Neither medium Eileen Garrett's terrifying pre-vision of a dirigible tragedy, nor an even more fearful warning from the dead Captain Hinchliffe to another mystic, Mrs. Earl, are held as grounds for delaying the much-publicized takeoff of the R 101 for India. Finally, in a séance that includes both women and the world-famous author Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes), Hinchliffe warns the navigator of the R 101 of its various structural problems. Despite these warnings, the 777-foot R 101 takes off on schedule -- and plunges to the ground on the French side of the Channel, killing all but six of the fifty-four aboard. But the disaster does not mark the end of his mind-boggling tale. 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.

JOHN G. FULLER had a distinguished career as a writer-producer-director. His television documentary The Great American Dream Machine won him the Public Television Emmy Award, and he is known for his hard-hitting investigative books such as We Almost Lost Detroit and Arigo: Surgeon with the Rusty Knife. In later years he became increasingly intrigued by the evidence he uncovered for life after death, and his meticulously researched books, The Ghost of Flight 401, The Airmen Who Would Not Die and The Interrupted Journey achieved bestseller status.