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 W Ward Ltd of Sheffield salvaged what they could of the wreckage, the work continuing through 1931. Although it was stipulated that none of the wreckage should be kept for souvenirs, Wards did make small dishes impressed with the words "Metal from R101", as they frequently did with the metal from ships or industrial structures they had worked on. The Zeppelin Company purchased five tons of duralumin from the wreck. The airship's competitor, R100, despite a more successful development programme and a satisfactory, although not entirely trouble-free, transatlantic trial flight, was grounded immediately after R101 crashed. The R100 remained in