Making the Magic Carpet, the tragic story of the R101 which begins as a seven-part drama serial on Radio 4 this Sunday, Bristol-based director Brian Miller had a problem: how to recreate the sound of the airship's engines.

He knew from research they were diesel, but no recordings were available. And then, almost inconceivably, he discovered the answer to the problem on his own doorstep.

 the framework and metal burned out," said Dick Warwick.

"I was able to describe from what I knew how the engines sounded in flight - a low monotonous note."

It was a stroke of luck for Brain Miller because Dick Miller must be one of the very few alive who not only heard and saw the R101 but witnessed the scene of the crash.

Elimination

From then on by a process of elimination, the director homed in on what he is sure was the sound produced by this monster airship, some 777 ft long and made out of the stomach linings of a million oxen.

The Magic Carpet is based on face. The characters, from Lord Thomson of Carditon, Secretary of State for Aviation, who conceived the idea of the government-backed airship and was to die  in it, to Flt Lt Irwin,

the pilot whose doubts went unheeded are genuine.

The shock which ran through the country after the disaster brought about the cancellation of the government -sponsored R102 and 103. And the frame of the private enterprise R100 which preceded it was actually steam-rollered.

Says Brain Miller: "One assumes that the emotional reaction at the time was so great they thought it right to destroy it.

Dick Warwick's recollection seems to confirm his opinion.

"People had been given the belief that these airships were so good and reliable, able to travel great distances. They knew about the gas that filled them , but they did not think anything so tragic could happen. When it did, they were terribly shocked.

Dick Warwick, one of the BBC's House Service Staff in Bristol had seen and heard the R101 fly over Yorkshire when he was a mere lad at Kingston-upon Hull.

Not only that, he had actually been in Paris on holiday at the time it crashed at Beauvais. Just outside the capital, on Sunday, October 5, 1930, with the loss of 54 people. (Two of the eight survivors later died from their injuries).

"We heard about the crash and some hours later we went to see the wreckage with all