The R.34’s epic journey, which took place just a few weeks after Alcock and Brown’s record-breaking westeast Atlantic flight of June 1919, was the first ever return flight across the Atlantic and the first east-west crossing by air.
The letter, which was recently acquired by National Museums Scotland, was written by Reverend George Davys Jones who worked as a chaplain at RAF East Fortune. He gave it to the R.34 crew to post to his sister in Bournemouth once the airship had reached the USA. It was dropped from the airship over Nova Scotia on 5 July, then discovered by Milton Weldon on 8 November at Selmah, Hants County, forwarded to Halifax, Nova Scotia and posted back to England, where it arrived later that month. The letter describes the sense of excitement about the R.34’s forthcoming journey, explaining that the whole station was required to guide the massive airship out of its shed ahead of its record breaking flight.
The 634-ft R.34 was stationed at East Fortune, now home to the National Museum of Flight, but which started out as a Royal Naval Air Station. Nicknamed ‘Tiny’, her hydrogen-filled gas bags alone required the intestines of 600,000 oxen to make them. The airships came under the command of the navy as their primary duties were convoy protection and anti-submarine activities. HMA R.34 arrived at East Fortune in May 1919. She had been constructed at the Wm Beardmore factory at Inchinnan near Glasgow but was completed too late to see active service. She had one operational voyage over the Baltic Sea as part of a show of strength in advance of the ratification of the treaty of Versailles.