Battlebags

Affectionately named 'battlebags' by their crews and 'pigs' by the local civilian inhabitants, Royal Naval Air Service airships were a familiar sight around Britain's shores during the First World War. At least 226 airships of all types were built and operated by the Royal Navy during the war in a bid to beat the deadly German U-boat menace. The first few hours of the war saw the French-built Astra-Torres and the German-built Parseval patrolling the Thames estuary.
Wartime designs such as the 'SS' class of 1915, followed by the larger 'Coastals' and later `Zeros' of 1917, rapidly expanded the RNAS lighter-than-air Branch. These classes of nonrigid airships performed a crucial role in antisubmarine patrols of British coastal waters and in the Mediterranean. The proud boast of the RNAS was that no ship was ever sunk if it was escorted by an airship.
Battlebags is the first book to record and describe in detail every single airship built or used by Great Britain during the First World War. The background to each class is given together with details on individual airships, including where they were built and stationed, their known crews, plus technical information and particulars of notable flights and total hours flown.
The author, Ces Mowthorpe, also describes the development of the airship in the years leading up to the First World War and the part it was destined to play in the years that followed. Lavishly illustrated with over 150 rare black and white photographs, Battlebags has taken the author more than thirty years to research and is destined to become the definitive work on the subject.

by Ces Mowthorpe
Published by Wrens Park 1998 (of Sutton 1st 1993) 194pp illustrated, index, bibliography. 20x27 fine, including d/j.






Note:
"Long" descriptions, where shown, may have been taken from the book's dust jacket notes, and as such are relevant to the date of publication (e.g. any references to "previously unpublished photographs" etc.) and not the present.

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