Empire of the Clouds story of the R101 airship, which crashed on its maiden voyage in northern France on 5 October 1930. The song was written entirely by the band's lead vocalist, Bruce Dickinson, who initially intended it to be about "World War I fighter airplanes;" Dickinson abandoned the idea after using the same theme for the song "Death or Glory," also from "The Book of Souls". At the time of recording, Dickinson was reading "a big, sort of encyclopedic crash report" of the R101, entitled "To Ride the Storm", which gave him the idea for the song's eventual subject. Dickinson describes it as
R101 many of his criticisms of the R101 team were unjustified. An extremely optimistic timetable was drawn up, with construction of the government-built airship to be begun in July 1925 and complete by the following July, with a trial flight to India planned for January 1927. In the event, the extensive experimentation that was carried out delayed the start of construction of R101 until early 1927. R100 was also delayed, and neither flew until late 1929. The whole airship programme was under the direction of the Director of Airship Development (DAD), Group Captain Peregrine Fellowes, with Colmore acting as his deputy.