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 her directly over the Beauvais Ridge, an area notorious for turbulent wind conditions. At 02:00 the watch was changed, Second Officer Maurice Steff taking over the command from Irwin. The R101 was at this point "flying heavy", relying on dynamic lift generated by forward airspeed to maintain altitude, estimated by the Board of Inquiry as at least above the ground. At about 02:07 R101 went into a dive from which she slowly recovered, probably losing around . As it did so Rigger S. Church, who was returning to the crew quarters to come off duty, was sent forward to release