A LETTER written 100 years ago and dropped over Nova Scotia during a record-breaking flight has gone on display at an East Lothian museum.

The document was written by the Rev George Davys Jones, who worked as a chaplain at RAF East Fortune, and is now on display at the National Museum of Flight there.

The letter was dropped from the R.34 airship during its double transatlantic crossing in 1919.

The epic journey, which took place just a few weeks after Alcock and Brown’s record-breaking west-east Atlantic flight, was the first-ever return flight across the Atlantic and the first east-west crossing by air.

The R.34’s trip also involved the first arrival in the USA by air when Major Pritchard parachuted from the airship to take charge of the hundreds of ground crew required, as well as the world’s first human and feline trans-Atlantic aerial stowaways, Newcastle man William Ballantyne and Wopsie the cat.

The letter, which was recently acquired by National Museums Scotland, was written by the Rev George Davys Jones, who gave it to the R.34 crew to post to his sister in Bournemouth once the airship had reached the USA.

It was dropped from the airship over Nova Scotia on July 5 and discovered by Milton Weldon on November 8 at Selmah, Hants County.

It was then forwarded to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and then posted back to England, where it arrived later that month.

The letter describes the sense of excitement about the R.34’s journey, explaining that the whole station was required to guide the massive airship out of its shed ahead of its record-breaking flight.

The 634-foot R.34 was stationed at East Fortune.

Nicknamed ‘Tiny’, her hydrogen-filled gas bags alone required the intestines of 600,000 oxen to make them.

The airships came under the command of the navy as their primary duties were convoy protection and anti-submarine activities.