More Comet references.
Assuming she was the blonde stewardess, one look at me would provide the answer! BTW, isn't it "Jeanette"?
Been trying to remember who played the part of the American film star, who - like the stewardess - befriended Honey on the flight.
While No Highway concerned metal fatigue and pre-dated the Comet 1 cabin failures, Cone of Silence - if memory serves - referred obliquely to another Achilles heel of the Comet 1: its vulnerability to being stalled on the ground by premature (and over) rotation. The hero has previously been censured for allegedly doing something similar, in contravention of the FCOM. In the story, though, he had followed the "book" precisely, unlike all the other pilots who HADN'T crashed. Emotive stuff... I wonder if David Beaty was still working for BOAC when he wrote it.
In real life, didn't the captain of a piston-engined aeroplane - demoted after a Comet take-off accident involving ground-stall - fly over the Bay of Naples searching for wreckage of the first missing Comet (G-ALYP)?
Also been trying to remember the name and plot of a different film in which Jack Hawkins played the part of a test pilot on an aircraft that was effectively a Bristol Freightener (170). Can anyone remember?
Last edited by Chris Scott; 22nd Mar 2010 at 09:52.
Reason: Removal of the redundant second "t" in Beaty.