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
1934 Air France Wibault 282T crash had been observed. The Dover lifeboat also joined the search. No trace of the aircraft was found during the search, which was hampered by thick fog. The Folkestone lifeboat did not return to its station until after 22:00 GMT. The lack of an SOS call from the aircraft indicated that it had crashed into the sea while attempting to fly below the low cloudbase. On 18 May, a mailbag from the aircraft was washed up on the French coast. The nationalities of the casualties were:- 1934 Air France Wibault 282T crash The 1934 Air France Wibault 282T crash occurred on