George Herbert Scott was the Captain of HMA 9. By 1917 he had already worked on non-rigids at Farnborough, Kingsnorth, Barrow and Anglesey. He went on to captain the R34 on the flight to the US in 1919 and was also on the R100 flight to Canada.
Major George Herbert Scott was the Captain of the R34 Airship on its famous transatlantic voyage on 2nd July 1919 from East Fortune, near Edinburgh, via Newfoundland to New York and back. This was the first time an aircraft had successfully flown from one continent to another, landed, refuelled, and returned without loss of life or unsustainable damage. The officers of the crew received Air Force Crosses with the exception of Scott who already had one. He was awarded a CBE, which was considered a bit downbeat since previous RAF officers who had successfully crossed the Atlantic had been knighted.
Major Scott was a regular RN engineer who had transferred from the RNAS to the RFC and subsequently to the RAF. It was whilst he worked at Pulham Air Station in Norfolk that under him much experimental work in the mooring of airships to masts was carried out. Pulham’s 120ft high mast was the first in Europe and Pulham played an important role in obtaining data for the ‘Imperial Communications’ program of the 1920s, which was to link the British Empire via the Imperial Airship Routes for which the giant airships R100 and R101 were intended.
It was as the Technical Director (Airships) for the Ministry of Civil Aviation that Major Scott boarded the R101 at Cardington on 4th October 1930 for its ill-fated voyage to India. Along with 47 others he perished the following morning when the airship crashed near Beauvais in France and burst into flames.
This article was written by Derek Jones of Shortstown.