QUOTE from henry crun:
Apparently O.P. didn't bat an eyelid, but turned round and said "strangely quiet, isn't it Mr Smith ?".
UNQUOTE
There was story at Canadair of the test-pilot, Al Lilly, I believe, still happily with us, who was on a test-flight at night in a C-4 over 8/8 cloud. The aircraft suffered a total electrical failure. What to do?
He knew where he was, more or less, in the flight test area, and he recalled the oil refinery, at the Eastern tip of Montreal island, that constantly burned off waste gases. The flames could be seen for miles. By the stars he set off in what he calculated as the right direction, and there indeed found a hole in the cloud caused by the convection current. Down he came through the hole and back visually below the cloud to Cartierville. Comment on the airmanship is superfluous.
I once travelled by road with him, and I swear he did a walk-around and full pre-flight check on the car. That, I suppose, is how one becomes an elderly retired test-pilot.
It was a C-4, as I recall, that brought the Queen back to the UK from South Africa when King George VI died.