R38-class airship
British rigid airship class destroyed in 1921

The R.38 class of rigid airships was designed for Britain's Royal Navy during the final months of the First World War. Airships of this class were intended for long-range patrol duties over the North Sea. Four similar airships were originally ordered by the Admiralty, but orders for three of these were cancelled after the armistice with Germany and R.38, the lead ship of the class, was sold to the United States Navy in October 1919 before completion.
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This entry incorporates text from “R38-class airship” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.