An emotive Great War campaign and Belgian Civil Decoration group of four awarded to Flying Officer M. H. Steff, Royal Air Force, late Royal Navy and Royal Naval Air Service, who was Second Officer of the R. 101 and Officer of the Watch at the time of her tragic loss over France in October 1930

1914-15 Star (M. 8534 M. H. Steff, 3 Wtr., R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (2/Lieut. M. H. Steff, R.A.F.); Belgium, Civic Decoration, 2nd Class, silver and enamel, crude repairs in places to the enamel on the latter, otherwise good very fine

together with:

Aero Club Royal De Belgique presentation medallion, in bronze, for ‘11e Coupe Gordon Bennett, Anvers 1926’, the reverse inscribed, ‘Flying Off. M. H. Steff’, 45mm. by 66mm.

British Colony at Antwerp presentation medallion, in bronze, for ‘The Gordon Bennett Cup, May 30th 1926’, the reverse inscribed, ‘Flying Officer M. H. Steff’, 56mm. by 65mm., extremely fine (6) £5000-6000

Maurice Henry Steff, who was born in Luton, Bedfordshire, in March 1896, entered the Royal Navy as a Writer and Coder in September 1914. Subsequently present at the battle of Jutland in H.M.S. Inflexible, he transferred to the Royal Naval Air Service’s Kite Balloon Section in the rank of Flight Officer in January 1918, in which capacity he served in the Adriatic Barrage. Having then participated in minesweeping operations in the Aegean, Dardanelles and Black Sea in 1919, he was posted to the Staff of the R.A.F’s Balloon Training School back in England, and, as an accomplished “balloonatic”, participated in the Gordon Bennett Cup in Belgium in May 1926, representing Great Britain in the balloon Bee.

Indeed it was on the back of such experience that he was subsequently posted to Royal Airship Works at Cardington in September 1928, the commencement of two years employment as an airship officer in the R. 100 and R. 101 projects. Thus his important part in the maiden and trial flights of both airships and, in fact, the R. 100’s epic return flight to Canada, when, for the first time, he acted as Second Officer. So, too, as Officer of the Watch in the control car, with a team of two Coxswains, seven Engineers, four Riggers and a W./T. Operator under his direct command. And it was in that capacity that he effectively took command of the R. 101 at 2 a.m. on 5 October 1930, just eight minutes before disaster struck over Beauvais on her ill-fated flight to India.

The R. 101 disaster needs little introduction here, attracting as it did a mass of world wide media coverage at the time and much published material since - the airship’s roll honour listed no less than 48 names, among them a host of experienced airship pioneers like Steff, and Brigadier-General Lord Thomson, C.B.E., D.S.O., the Secretary of State for Air. But to put the project in perspective, it was back in 1924 that the British Government had decided to build two modern rigid airships with a view to starting an airline with a preliminary route being London-India and eventually London-Australia. Constructed at the Royal Airship Works at Cardington in Bedfordshire, the R. 101 found herself under growing competition from airship R. 100, the latter being privately funded and being constructed by Vickers.

However, after much political wrangling over her size and engines, R. 101 completed her first test flight in October 1929, though she was found to be lacking in several fundamental areas, not least the fact she weighed some 23 tons more than originally intended, as a result of her complex design; so, too, the added concern of a reduction in lift. Accordingly it was argued that the programme should be scrapped, but the incumbent Labour Government had already invested a fortune in the project and was reluctant to back down. Modifications were therefore carried out, including the scrapping of a particularly costly power steering unit, while Lord Thomson, the Secretary of State for Air, pressed for a maiden flight to India - his intention being for a triumphant return to the U.K. in mid-October 1930, to attend the Imperial Conference, an intention no doubt further influenced by the fact the R. 100 had just completed her successful crossing to Canada. Further frustrated by the results of R. 101’s next test flight - one engine had to be shut down after the failure of the oil cooling system - Lord Thomson continued nonetheless to push for the flight to India and obtained R.101 a Certificate of Airworthiness without even a proper inspection of the airship being carried out; her speed trials, meanwhile, were to be carried out during the trip to India.

Thus was set in motion the ill-fated long distance flight of the world’s largest airship, R. 101’s 777 feet long airframe carrying 54 passengers - the resultant weight compelling her to ditch four tons of water to get airborne from Cardington at 7.34 p.m. on 4 October 1930. James Leasor’s The Story of the R. 101 takes up the story:

‘Farther across the field [at Cardington], Violet Steff, the wife of Second Officer Maurice Steff, had brought their fourteen month-old daughter to see her father leave. Mrs. Steff was there with her friend, Janita Daisy Johnston, whose husband was the Navigator ... He and Steff were in the strange position of holding similar posts in both the big airships, R. 100 and R. 101, a position that arose from the general shortage of trained men of their skill and calibre ... For the Steffs, a family reason had already made the afternoon noteworthy. Their daughter has said the word “Dad” for the first time. When Maurice Steff had left for Canada in the R. 100 that july, he had shaved off his moustache, for all the crew were clean-shaven another left-over from his Navy days - and he had also made all sorts of arrangements in case anything went wrong. This time he made no such provisions at all, for the R. 101 was the biggest, safest, most modern ship in the world. Nothing could go wrong ... ’

Rolling and pitching a few miles out of Cardington, and consequently flying very low, the R. 101 reached the coast over Hastings at around 9.30 p.m. and thence set out over the Channel.

At 02.00 hours, having crossed the Channel and passed over Poix airfield, Steff entered the R. 101’s control car as the next Officer of the Watch, the airship then being battered by a ferocious storm over the Beauvais area. And when, about five minutes later, he received a report of damage to the airship’s forward outer covers - damage that was likely to spread rapidly - he ordered a reduction in speed. Sir Peter Masefield’s history of the R. 101, To Ride the Storm, continues the story:

‘At 0207 the new watch would have barely settled down to its three hour tasks. Steff would still be occupied with his writing up of the 0200 hours Journey Log. The height and rudder coxswains would still be getting the feel of the ship. R.101 was flying at, perhaps, a little below the mean height of 1,200 feet in heavy turbulence above ground varying in height between 200 and 300 feet.

Inevitably – and quite normally in the rough air and with fresh hands on the wheel – the nose of the ship would be hunting up and down, the height of the ship varying by two or three hundred feet around the mean. For a combination of reasons, one of these downwards surges took on a steeper tilt and then, it seems probable, entered a downwards gust in the lee of the Beauvais Ridge, which depressed the nose still further. The power of the engines, inclined downwards, would continue to drive the airship towards the ground.

In such conditions, the Height Coxswain probably took several seconds to grasp the situation. When he did, the evidence shows that he reacted with urgency and spun the wheel to wind the elevators to their full-up position. That would take about twenty-five seconds. The time would be about 0208.

‘Full-up elevator’ would have one immediate effect on an airship flying at cruising speed. It would depress the tail and so bring the whole ship nearer to the ground, squashing downwards to come gradually into a horizontal position after losing some 700 feet of height. Then, with up-elevator and under power, in normal conditions the ship would begin to climb away from a position uncomfortably close to the ground.

But there was, certainly, something else going on as well during these critical sixty seconds of time ... At that moment there was just one chance of survival, one chance to pluck safety out of disaster. Sadly, but understandably, it was not taken.

Full engine power with full up elevators would not only have continued to check the dive but would also have driven R. 101 upwards even in its dire condition. The airship would have climbed slowly away and time would have been won for jettisoning of more ballast and some of the remaining 22 tons of fuel-oil to lighten and trim the ship. The situation was desperate but not catastrophic. In somewhat similar circumstances on 27 March 1929, the vastly experienced Hugo Eckener had called for full power and had saved the Graf Zeppelin from ploughing into the ground in the Danube valley.

With such action R.101 could have regained height and then limped home, down-wind, flying on low engine power to reduce the strain on the cover and to conserve the remaining fuel.

But with an urgent report of damage forward there would, no doubt seem - as a snap judgement - to be an overriding need to reduce speed.

For Steff, relatively inexperienced, in the control car of R.101 the instinctive and obvious reaction was to shut down power. He did just that. It was the fatal step.

So, tragically, but understandably, Steff took exactly the opposite action to that which would have saved the ship. He rang the engine telegraphs for a reduction in rpm from fast-cruise to slow.

Bereft of power, bereft of forwards way, bereft of dynamic lift, R.101’s nose fell away again slowly and then more steeply. At 300 feet above the ground the airship was less than twenty seconds from disaster.

At 0209 hours at a forward speed of no more than ten miles an hour over the ground, the underside of R101’s nose drove hard into the thick undergrowth of the Bois de Coutumes on the 200 feet contour-line in a little valley just south of the hamlets of Allonne and Bongenoult.

The control-car beneath the hull was crushed up into the main structure and with it a row of calcium flares, slung along the sides, were split open against the soaking ground and brushwood. In such conditions they would instantly ignite to start the fierce fire below the passenger accommodation so clearly remarked upon by all the survivors from positions further aft.

At the same time the two forward engine cars, attached below the hull, were swung round and pushed up into the envelop where their hot exhaust pipes would ignite the mixture of hydrogen and air around the ruptured bags.

In a moment, in the high wind and the driving rain, the whole countryside was lit by the glare of flames.

Eight survivors, four of them from the three rearward engine cars, one from the fire-proofed smoking room, scrambled somehow out of the wreck and stumbled across the wet grass beside the wood; shocked, scorched, bleeding; two of them fatally injured.

They watched helplessly as the holocaust consumed R.101, consumed the future of British airships, consumed the work, the hopes, the ambitions, the wit and the wisdom, the achievements and the miscalculations too, of a gallant company of men.

In two minutes of disaster a door had closed on a chapter of aviation’s history.’

Amidst the carnage, five incinerated bodies were found in the crushed remains of the control car, none of which could be identified, but one of which was undoubtedly that of Steff. The return of the R. 101’s dead aboard two destroyers, their lying in state in Westminster Hall, and their burial in a common grave at Cardington were yet further cause for extensive media coverage, so too the subsequent investigation in to the causes of the tragedy, a story retold in Sir Peter Masefield’s detailed investigative history, and with much reference to Steff; sold with an original R. 101 “In Memoriam” card and a postcard with image of the crew’s burial site, together with a reprint of the Daily Express, dated 6 October 1930, and a small quantity of research.