ZRS
Rowan Partridge

THE BOOK

December 7th, 1941… The bombed-out hulk of the USS Macon lies smoking on her mast at Ewa, Hawaii. Commander Ivor Briars, skipper of the Zeppelin Rigid Scout USS Long Island (ZRS-10), must abandon his pursuit of the retiring Japanese and order his flying aircraft carrier back to Moffett Field, California for repairs.

Susan Briars, the Commander’s wife, is an engineer and a vamp; she’s aboard with other civilian technicians when Long Island again sets out to scout the southwest Pacific. Australian liaison Lieutenant Allan Miles is attracted to Susan, but happily finds his wife Jillian is a survivor of the Japanese attack on the British hospital airship R-101. After their rescue, Long Island’s lightweight scout planes locate and blunt the Japanese spearhead attacking Port Moresby. The Battle of the Coral Sea ensues, but the Japanese have a plan to fight the American fleet and their giant airplane carrying scout dirigible…

In this historical fiction masterpiece, the US Naval rigid airship continued to evolve after 1935. Details of the war in the Pacific take a decidedly different turn, as the Japanese must face this uniquely American airborne warplane launcher, the Zeppelin Rigid Scout. It’s a thrilling history that could have been, a tale only Rowan Partridge could create, and one that will tickle the imagination of anyone who has ever wondered… what if?

December 7, 1941, the USS Long Island, the U.S. Navy's largest and newest rigid airship, an aircraft-carrying ZRS, enroute from her California base to Hawaii for fleet exercises.

History takes over as the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and the huge flying aircraft carrier launches her special fighters and recon bombers in pursuit of the enemy. The mission is successful, but a near-fatal structural failure sends her limping back to base.

In the first desperate month of World War II the lighter-than-air giant is refitted for the kind of war she was built to fight: Long-range ocean reconnaissance and strike.

The Long Island sets off for Australia under Captain Ivor Briars, with her hundred-man crew of the navy's elite airshipmen. The hook-on pilots, Corby, Renny, Smith and Macready are now experienced aviators. The Australian, Lieutenant-Commander Allan Miles, is a veteran of the Battle of the Atlantic. But the navigator, Jesse Tyman has a secret. And the civilian specialists traveling with the airship includes Susan Briars, the Captain's wife, a brilliant design engineer, but as erratic as she is beautiful.

From her futuristic base in California to the blue waters of the Solomon Islands and to Tokyo itself, the ZRS battles the Japanese juggernaut. From the fall of Singapore to the Battle of the Coral Sea her crew knows tragedy and triumph as they take their mighty but fragile airship into combat.

ZRS by Rowan Partridge. What if Flying Carrier rigid airships had been operating in the Pacific Theater during WWII? A thrilling novel you won't be able to put down!

THE AUTHOR

Rowan Partridge was born in Lae, New Guinea, in 1950. His father, Ron, had been a wartime fighter pilot and had a long career with airlines in New Guinea and Australia. His mother, Eve, was a teacher, and this led to a multi-path career for Rowan. He took up both teaching and flying at different times, with yet a third career as a Naval Reserve officer thrown in. "I kept up flying for pleasure and even joined the Naval Reserve, so I eventually met most of my life goals. About the only one still to go was to become a serious writer."

"ZRS" was written as a hypothetical story because of the author's disgust with history. "Perhaps it was my unwillingness to accept that good ideas sometimes just fail, or maybe it was a romantic streak a mile wide!"

The failure of the rigid airship in history was due to a number of factors, yet plain bad luck seemed to be a common factor with so many of the crashes and other disasters which befell the airship community throughout the first half of the 20th Century. What if the luck had been better, reasoned Partridge. What if some of the airshipmen had been a bit more sensible about their limitations, or a bit more daring when things were going their way? What if the R101 and the "Hindenburg" had escaped their fiery ends? What if some of the key personalities in the airship world who died in these accidents had survived to complete their work ? It seemed likely that the rigid airship would still be around when World War II broke out.

Some of the most interesting airship technology was developed by the United States Navy with its flying carriers and special ground handling equipment. If this had still been available after Pearl Harbor, what would have happened. The "USS Long Island" and the story of "ZRS" explore that alternative history. Are there any future novels in the works?

"Of course. The hypothetical is my favorite style. I have a story set in the 18th Century which looks at Australia as it might have been if only… but that would be telling. And I want to write an authentic, not-the-end-of-the-world novel about the U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command, a subject which fascinates me." Other airship stories which may come from the keyboard of Rowan Partridge may include a novel about the L59, the "Afrika Ship" which made an epic voyage in World War I to relieve the German army in East Africa. And then there is always the R101, whose loss was as poignant as any Shakespearean tragedy. "I wish I had started writing novels earlier in life, so I would have time to do all this. The trouble is, you need to have kicked around a bit before you have the maturity to do it well. But maybe that's just me."

Partridge currently teaches as the Education Officer at a prison in North Queensland.

Paperback $15.95

BACK