AIRSHIPS continue to fascinate and stir the memories of many readers.

Britain had a fleet of more than 200 airships during World War One. A Royal Naval Airship Station was based at Howden in East Yorkshire.

In the late 1920s and 1930, the giant British airships the R100 and R101 could have been seen locally and in 1936 there is a well-documented journey by the famous German dirigible the Hindenburg which travelled across Lancashire and above Skipton, Keighley, Leeds and Thorne.

The earliest sighting of a dirigible comes from Stanley Gilling who is 92. He remembers an airship flying over Lockwood in about 1919 or 1920.

He was at Mount Pleasant School at the time, aged about four or five.

Eighty-one year old Margaret Midgley of Lepton says the Hindenburg was so big she saw it as it travelled westwards over Leeds in 1936. She was 10 and in Denby Lane at Grange Moor.

“It was so huge, it could not be missed. It was a sunny day.”

David Watson, who writes from Gavinton in the Scottish borders, says, “My father who lived in Wakefield all his life remembered seeing the Graf Zeppelin airship fly over the city sometime in the early 1930s. The airship was some distance away and, bearing in mind its height and huge size, it could easily have been seen in Huddersfield as well.”

Peter Broadbent says, “I was born in 1926 and my family moved to a house in Cleveland Road in 1931. Some time after that, I can’t remember the exact year, my mother pointed out the airship going overhead at quite a low level. I was in Marsh at the time, and the event made such an impression on me that I can remember to this day the exact spot I stood on when the airship cruised over me.”

Mrs Eileen Pearce of Springwood says, “I went to Spark Hall school in Longwood. We were having lessons and in came the headmistress and told us all to go into the playground. This, in itself, was exciting as schools were very strict.

“We all stood in the playground and over us came a German airship, a sight never to be forgotten.

“I was born in 1921 so I think I may have been 10 or 12 years old. It then flew over Leeds. My Granny lived in Leeds and she swore it stopped and took pictures of the ammunition factory.”

Airship development had plenty of tragedies. Tony Bonser of Marsh has a memorial card for the ZR2 airship, built for America, which crashed during tests at Hull in 1921.

Britain’s R101 crashed in France in 1930 and our airship industry was never the same again. The Hindenburg crashed in America in 1937.

Gordon Bedford joined the RAF in 1951 and was sent to Cardington in Bedfordshire, which is where the R101 had been built. When he was there, a replica, about a third of the original size, was built but had trouble with its launch.

“All the local dignitaries went aboard a gondola that hung below the airship but they were too heavy and it wouldn’t lift off. The dignitaries had to get off again.”

The days of airships are even remembered in the Bullecourt Museum of the 7th Dukes on Scar Lane in Golcar. They have an unexploded incendiary bomb that was dropped from a Zeppelin on Nottingham in the Great Raid when seven German airships flew over Britain on September 22, 1916.

The museum also has a promotional “message from the skies” – an octagonal card, about the size of a beermat, dropped from an R33 airship over Oldham in 1919 to encourage people to buy bonds and certificates to help the Pennine town’s post war recovery.

Curator Joe Garside says, “I knew an old chap who lived through the First World War. He told me he used to stick a newspaper up the drainpipe and light it to make it roar,” says Joe. “Then he would shout, ‘Zeppelins’ and all the neighbours would run for cover.”

No harm in waving our flag

CULTURE Minister Margaret Hodge attacked the Proms for not being multicultural.

“The audiences for many of our greatest cultural events – I’m thinking in particular of the Proms – is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this,” she said.

And yes, I know it’s not exactly a free-flowing passage of the English language but that’s a politically correct Culture Minister for you.

Presumably she doesn’t like the flag waving on the Last Night or the singing of Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem.

Actually, looking at some of the mob in the body of the hall wearing fancy dress and bobbing up and down to Henry Wood makes me shudder at the antics of the British white middle classes.

But I always watch Last Night of the Proms on TV because it is so wonderfully daft and British and exuberant.

And when you’ve got songs as powerful as Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem that stir even my lackadaisical heart they should be treasured and embraced and flags should be waved for all the right reasons of pride without prejudice.

This year, I may just buy a St George’s flag and wrap it around my shoulders while watching Last Night at the Proms.

As far as I know, they still can’t touch your for it.