3-022-370 - British Pathe Ltd/Heritage Images

RAF Officers and Male Civilians Taking Part in a Funeral Parade for the Dead Crew of the R-101 Airship in Cardington, Bedfordshire, 1930. 'But with progress, dreadfully sobering failures. An airship named the R101 - a ship carrying with her a nation's aeronautic future...The end of what was to have been an epic flight to India. On board, the air minister and the best airship brains the nation possessed...the fate of the R101 was a story that few believed. But there, in a field at Beauvais, was the dreadful proof. The bodies they found, so badly burned as to be unrecognisable, they brought back to England, and there at Cardington, the airship's base, they laid them to rest in a common grave. For British airships, the end. And for those who sailed with such high hopes, the end too. But though they'd failed, they had not died in vain. The lesson had been learned'. From "Time To Remember - A New Era", 1931 (Reel 3); documentary about the world in the early 1930s.