Welcome, this site will hopefully enlighten and inform you of the great and colourful history of Cardington airship station/ RAF Cardington, Home of the Ill fated R101, which remains to this day the largest British aircraft that has ever been constructed, at 777ft long it is a record that has never been broken. also Cardington is were the barrage balloon crews were trained in world war 2. Read more
R101 was one of a pair of British rigid airship completed in 1929 as part of a British government programme to develop civil airships capable of service on long-distance routes within the British Empire.
After some trial flights, and subsequent modifications to increase lifting capacity which included lengthening the airship by 14 m, it crashed on 5 October 1930 in France during its maiden overseas voyage, killing 48 of the 54 people on board.