“Ships’s Broken Falling!” RAF Veteran & Historian’s New Book Documents Disaster Over the Humber; as World’s Former Largest Airship Crashes in Flames.
Meticulously researched by Kenneth Deacon, “Ship’s Broken Falling!” takes readers on a very real journey back to August of 1921, as the R.38/ZR.2 Airship bursts into flames, crashes into the River Humber and takes forty-four lives with it. However, Deacon takes the airship’s story one step further; weaving in a fictional love story that showcases the true emotion behind disaster.
United Kingdom – Following almost three decades in the air and a stint with British Aerospace, Kenneth Deacon moved to Howden to work as a senior system safety analyst in Brough. While always a history buff, it wasn’t until this move that Deacon realised the true impact airships had played in the region’s history. What started as a simple research project soon grew to become a passion, and now an action-packed book.
“Ship’s Broken Falling!” recounts the true story of the R.38/ZR.2 Airship, which greatly impacted the area in August of 1921. At the time it was the world’s biggest airship, and Deacon doesn’t want its memory to ever be forgotten.
Synopsis:
The book tells the story of the R38/ZR2 airship which broke in half and crashed into the River Humber in Hull England. It also tells the fictitious love story of a local girl and one of the American crew.
“Out of forty-eight people on board that day, only four survived,” explains Deacon. “The event rocked the world at the time, but now is somewhat forgotten in the fabric of time. It is so much more than just another accident, but the loss of dozens of people each with compelling stories to tell. I’ve attempted to depict two of these stories by fusing the book’s fact with some gripping fiction.”
Continuing, “Titanic did a great job of fictionalising the real-world events of that disaster, so I am now doing the same with R.38/ZR.2. I don’t believe that there is anything out there on the market like this.”
Readers and fellow historians alike have praised the author’s ability to stay true to the facts while melding reality with a bold love story; a balance many authors find hard to strike.
“Perhaps the love story could be true after all. That’s the shattering this about these crashes; you lose so much more than an aircraft and its souls – but the stories that made it all come together,” he adds.
About the Author
Kenneth Deacon moved up to Howden after a lifetime spent in the aviation industry, first in the RAF for twenty-two years, then six years with an airline before working at British Aerospace in Bristol and on the design team of the Airbus A330/A340 aircraft. His last job was as a senior system safety analyst at Brough.
At Howden Ken and his late wife joined the local history class and on being told that airships had played a very big part in Howden's history he started to research the subject interviewing some of the people who had actually worked on the giant airship, with the result he has written two books on the Howden's Royal Naval Airship Station, one on the making of the R.100 airship, and one on the 1921 disaster when the R38/ZR2 airship crashed into the River Humber off Hull's Victoria Pier.
Ken is now the Howden Civic Society represented on the Sir Barnes Wallis Memorial Trust and has become the unofficial airship historian for the East Riding of Yorkshire and as appeared on BBC Look North and Radio Humberside.