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 (South Africa) R101 (South Africa) The R101 is a regional road in South Africa that is the designation for old sections of road that were previously the N1, prior to upgrading. The R101 begins in Bellville at the R102 and runs to the south parallel to the newer N1 freeway and is called Old Paarl Road. It crosses the Drakenstein Mountains as Du Toitskloof Pass (820m) where the new route bypasses as the Huguenot Tunnel. Through the pass it rejoins the N1 for 8 km until it separates again towards Rawsonville until it joins the N1 again at Worcester. The R101 does