British 50s B&W film about metal fatigue?

[Fareastdriver]

I remember watching a RAF instructional film at around 1967. The opening scene was a twin engined aircraft, Hudson or similar, diving out of cloud. It was overstressed on the pull out and the port wing broke off. One roll before the pilot stopped it, presumably with the starboard airleron, and it continued its sixty degree dive with ninety degrees of bank on until it disappeared behind a hangar and crashed. Undoubtably all on board were killed but we young pilots all cheered.

[Double Zero]

No Highway

I'd think ' No Highway ' should be available, either 2nd hand or if lucky new, as people are doing DVD re-releases of classic films, I got a DVD of ' Yangtse Incident ' that way recently, through the place named after a large river.

It's a while since I read it ( think I have All N.S.'s books ) but wasn't the plot that the air engineer has his theory, then finds the aircraft of the same type he's a passenger on is quickly approaching the hours of the previous doomed ones !

Can't help thinking memories of the Comet documentaries are getting mixed in...

[The SSK]

You don't have to be a metallurgist ...

That biplane tail is bizarre. No wonder it fell off.

[The Civil Civillian]

Ok... I accept the kicks to the pants. It is NHITS!

:-) Thank you all who took the trouble to try to input data but encounted my thick skull.

I'm downloading it at the mo... free.. as a torrent.

The reason why I didn't think it was NHITS was:
A, it has US stars in it...

and:

B, the bits about exploring Canada looking in lakes!

It seemed the completely wrong film!!!

But allow me to acknowlege the power of the 'spotters gallery'! May your binoculars be ever bigger, but lighter!

[HarmoniousDragmaster]

I know what you mean, you wouldn't really expect the stars of 'Destry Rides Again' to turn up in a movie set in Hants

[ColinB]

Janette Scott

I know most of you are interested in the aircraft but I was thrilled to see that one of my boyhood dreams was almost starring in this film, the beautiful Janette Scott.
She used to go with Mum and Dad to the Church Socials in the Morecambe/ Lancaster area and was admired from afar by most of us.
Did you say there was an aeroplane in the movie?

[Chris Scott]

I had pretty much the same experience as treadigraph, reading all of NSN's books in Africa in my teens. All, that is, except On the Beach, having seen the film: one's own pictures always seem better, but fail to materialise if you've seen others first. (Like the Hollywood Reindeer - isn't it hideous?)

Considering it was a Hollywood movie of a quintissentially British book, the film of No Highway was remarkably good. For a big star, James Stewart's portrayal of Mr (Dr?) Honey is understated and convincing - they don't come like him any more.

Although I was already nuts on aviation, Nevil Shute (Norway)'s books - not least his autobiography, Slide Rule - helped convince me to pursue a career in it. The other writer that springs to mind was David Beaty (BOAC pilot), who wrote Heart of the Storm (loosely based on the BSAA debacle) and (I think) the abovementioned Cone of Silence.

[ColinB]

Chris Scott

You're not related to Janette are you?

[Chris Scott]

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?

[Saab Dastard]

Man in the Sky?

SD

[ColinB]

Chris Scott

I think the blonde stewardess was Glynis Johns.
BTW It was Thora Janette Scott daughter of Thora Hird and Jimmy Scott professionally Janette Scott aged about 12-13 when the film was made.
Once you've sung hymns with a girl you don't get her name wrong.

[NutherA2]

Been trying to remember who played the part of the American film star, who - like the stewardess - befriended Honey on the flight

Marlene Dietrich

[Chris Scott]

You are right of course, Saab Dastard.
YouTube - The Man in the Sky ... Jack Hawkins (1957)

Janette Scott
Quote:
"Once you've sung hymns with a girl you don't get her name wrong."
Thanks for setting me straight on that, ColinB ! Now I get it: she played Honey's daughter, not the stewardess. Ah, Glynis Johns, what a nice lady.

Thanks, NutherA2. Miss Dietrich wasn't always as understanding.

Been doing some belated Googling, and see that David Beaty's name only has one "t". (The fact that my gaffe is already accessible via the search engine is making me paranoid.)
Evidently he had left BOAC, to pursue writing, some time before his Cone of Silence (novel) was published.

Notwithstanding AF447 (and, perhaps, BA038?), there are fewer mysteries in civil aviation these days than in the 'Fifties. And the fastest aeroplanes are scarcely any faster.

[Proplinerman]

The man in the sky

Clicked on that You Tube link and watched the clip from "The man in the sky." Not a film I'm familiar with, but it looks like a classic British fifties movie-one I'll have to look out for on TV.

I am no pilot and not knowing the plot of the film, I don't know what was wrong with the Biffo in it, but I'm sure I've read that the B170 couldn't maintain height if one engine failed. Is that right? Because it seems to be maintaining height here, with one engine failed.

I visited Pendeford airfield in October 1975, at the tail end of my planespotting days. I remember I travelled for miles on buses from Edgbaston, finally arrived there and found that it had been disused for some years and seemed to have become home to hundreds of tons of assorted industrial junk. From looking at modern maps, it looks like it was later built over as a housing estate-the fate of so many airfields. I packed in planespotting a few months after this.

Whilst on the subject of Biffos, here is a link to a photo I took at the Reynolds Museum in Wetaskawin, Canada, in September 2005, showing one of the few survivors-Hawkair's machine. First time I'd seen a short-nosed B170 since the unforgettable night in 1971/2 when Aer Turas's EI-APC clattered (and believe me it did "clatter"-I'll never forget it) out from M/C over my parents' house.

Also saw another B170 on that trip, at Yellowknife, where it had been mounted on a pole since 1968-1st wheeled a/c to land at the North Pole, according to a plaque by it, in 1967.

JetPhotos.Net Photo » C-GYQS (CN: 13060) Private Bristol 170 Freighter Mk.31M by Michael Blank

And here's the one at Yellowknife-photo not taken by me.

JetPhotos.Net Photo » CF-TFX (CN: 13137) Wardair Canada Bristol 170 Freighter C.1A by Peter Unmuth-AirTeamImages

What a characterful aircraft the Bristol 170 was, even tho I only ever saw one in the air and G-APAU and G-APAV at Coventry in 1972 or 1973, before my encounters with two more in Canada in 2005. I don't think it was such a nice aircraft to be a passenger in tho, again from what I've read, or to fly?

[The Civil Civillian]

Well... I watched it. Thought it an acceptable way to while away a few hours. :-)

Struck by the number of crew: 5 flight deck, 1 mechanic in a white boilersuit and 2 cabincrew. Sheesh!!!!

The 5 flightdeck are, AFAICT:
2 pilots,
Ft Engineer
Navigator
and bomb-aimer!

Nah.. I joke... what did the 5th man do? Radio?

[crisso]

Still talking of films, don't forget 'Cone of Silence' based on the book mentioned earlier in this thread. British B&W movie starring Michael Craig, Bernard Lee, etc. Worth a watch, if not obviously so detailed as the excellent book.
It's available on DVD from the usual online sources.

[ColinB]

Thread Creep

Glynis Johns, what a nice lady

Steve Sondheim also thought so much of her that he famously wrote the link just for her and tailored it to her limited voice.
YouTube - Glynis Johns Send in the Clowns

[Tankertrashnav]

I agree that Nevil Shute is a terrific storyteller - I have the complete set of his published works and have read all of them more than once. "No Highway" is a great tale, with a supernatural element (the ouija board used to find the crash site) which Shute introduced into many of his books

some of his other books prophesied events which have gone close to the way he wrote of them.

However in "In the Wet" Shute got it almost completely wrong. Britain in the 80's is strongly socialist (we had Maggie!), the population had collapsed to 30 million because of mass emigration (he totally failed to foresee immigration), you could buy a house for £5 (!) and a right wing Australia (they had a Labor government) is strongly royalist to the extent that the Queen goes to live there. Still, future tellers in literature rarely get it right, and it's a great tale, with aviation at its centre as is often the case with Shute's novels.

[reynoldsno1]

However in "In the Wet" Shute got it almost completely wrong

maybe, or maybe not - who knows what 2080 might look like?

[Tankertrashnav]

I can't begin to imagine - I reckon if I had a try I'd make a worse job of it than Shute did on the 1980's!