THE DISASTER OF THE R 101
We might reasonably entitle this 'The Uses of Precognition', with a large question mark to follow after. A prophecy to be useful must fall on heedful ears. But then, when false prophecies abound, how shall we distinguish the true ones? Into what worse chaos our affairs would fall, if we abandoned the guidance of reason for that of the soothsayer! The middle path in these matters is indeed difficult - yet we shall learn the Way of it, some time and somehow.
On October 6, 1930, the R 101 crashed. on a hillside at Beauvais, France. It was a dirigible, and the largest aircraft existing at that time. 48 persons were killed, including the English Minister of Air and an Air Vice-Marshall. The disaster had been specifically foretold by a series of remarkable predictions.
An astrological prediction by R.H. Naylor, in the London Sunday Express, early on the day of the accident, emphasized in black type the imminence of the disaster.
Six months earlier a Mr Wright of Liverpool saw in a dream, of great clarity, the destruction of this particular ship, the R 101. A week later the dream reoccurred. On the night of October 3, three days before the accident, a Mr. Boyd of Enfield had a dream in which he saw a large aircraft crash on a hillside, the arrival of a company of soldiers under a mounted officer, and the excited movements of the latter. These details conformed to later information and photographs. Both of these dreams were reported to Edith Lyttelton (former President of the Society for Psychical Research), and were investigated by her and accepted as probable cases of prevision.
For several months before the disaster, Mrs. E. Hinchliffe, widow of a famous airman, had been receiving what she believed were messages from her husband. In these the fate of the R 101 was predicted many times. Mrs Hinchliffe went so far as to warn the navigator of the ship, who had known her husband personally. And a few hours before the end came, a final message came through; "Nothing but a miracle can now save R 101." The miracle did not occur.
Two days after the crash, a seance was held at the National Laboratory for Psychical Research, with Mrs Eileen Garrett as medium. The Flight Commander of the R 101 purported to communicate, and gave a detailed and technical account of the accident. A verbatim record was made and published by Harry Price. A script was prepared dealing with this seance and with the case as a whole, and the B.B.C. made plans for broadcasting it. This plan was cancelled at the last moment because of the grief it might cause to surviving relatives.
It is difficult to conceive of any American network making similar plans for such a script, in spite of many tentative dabblings in things psychic. But where the data are so remarkable and so well verified, it is a pity that publicity cannot be given them, in the interest of public enlightenment.
The London magazine Prediction for July carries a more extended account of the matter we have here summarized.
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