Christopher Thomson , 1st Baron Thomson Christopher Birdwood Thomson , 1st Baron Thomson PC ( 13 April 1875 – 5 October 1930 ) was a British Army officer who went on to serve as a Labour minister and peer . He served as Secretary of State for Air under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and between 1929 and 1930 , when he was killed in the R101 disaster . Early life . Born in Nasik ( now Nashik ) in the Bombay Presidency of India to a military family , Thomson attended Cheltenham College . His father was Major - General David Thompson , Royal Engineers , and his mother was the daughter of Major - General Christopher Birdwood ; William Birdwood , 1st Baron Birdwood was another grandson of Major - General Birdwood . Career . Military . After graduating from Sandhurst in 1894 , Thomson joined the Royal Engineers . He served first in Mauritius and then saw action during the Second Boer War ( 1899 - 1902 ) , where he was detailed to help with the RE Balloon Section outside Kimberley . In World War I he first served at the British Expeditionary Force Headquarters , and was Chief Military Interpreter between Sir John French and General Joffre . In 1915 Thomson , a fluent French speaker , was sent to Bucharest as military attaché on Kitchener ' s initiative to bring Romania into the war . But when there he quickly formed the view that an unprepared and ill - armed Romania facing a war on three fronts against Austria - Hungary , Turkey and Bulgaria would be a liability not an asset to the allies . This view was brushed aside by Whitehall , and he signed a Military Convention with Romania on 13 August 1916 . By the end of 1916 he had to alleviate the consequences of Romania ' s capitulation , and he supervised the destruction of the Romanian oil wells to deny them to Germany . After a distinguished wartime career both behind and in front of the lines , most notably at Jericho in the Palestine Campaign , Thomson formed part of the British delegation at the Versailles conference , but condemned the Versailles terms as " containing the seeds of another war . " As in Romania where he followed a policy ( of making Romania an ally ) that he did not agree with , he found both experiences profoundly negative . Politics . After Versailles Thomson made the decision to enter politics , and joined the Labour Party and Fabian Society . He stood as Labour candidate in two Tory strongholds , UK Parliament constituency in 1922 and UK Parliament constituency in 1923 , but failed to win either seat . In 1924 , however , newly elected Labour Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald elevated him to the peerage as Baron Thomson , of Cardington in the County of Bedford . He was sworn of the Privy Council at the same time . He served as Secretary of State for Air in Macdonald ' s first short lived Labour administration of 1924 - interrupting briefly Sir Samuel Hoare ' s seven year grip on the post . The fall of the government meant that it was not until 1929 that he regained the position , once again serving under Macdonald . In the interim he had maintained his air interests acting as chairman of the Royal Aeronautical Society and the Royal Aero Club , and patron of the Air League . Private life . Thomson was known as Kit to his family and C . B . to his friends . In March 1915 while British military attache in Bucharest , he met the ( married ) French - Romanian author Princess Marthe Bibesco , and remained devoted to her for the rest of his life . They corresponded regularly . She dedicated four books to " C . B . T . " and visited the site of the R101 accident with their mutual friend the Abbé Mugnier in December 1930 . Death . His second term in office was cut short by tragedy as Thomson died in the crash of the R101 airship , a government designed dirigible , on its maiden flight to Karachi in October 1930 . The accident claimed the lives of almost 50 and caused the cancellation of the British airship programme by Thomson ' s successor as air minister Lord Amulree . It was Thomson himself who had initiated the programme in 1924 and he who had rushed through the development of the R101 : the privately ( Vickers ) built R100 was demonstrably more reliable . Thomson ' s vision of a uniquely British form of intercontinental passenger travel would only be realised by subsequent Labour governments ' development of the Concorde .