When you are stuck in traffic on the way to the next Farnborough air show, here's a way to pass the time. Spot the place where veteran British actor Jack Hawkins stopped to offer a lift to American movie star James Stewart in the 1951 film No Highway in the Sky. For nephews and nieces none the wiser, the film was based on No Highway, a 1948 book by Nevil Shute which dealt with the virtually unknown phenomenon of fatigue failure in a large transport aircraft - the fictional Rutland Reindeer. Stewart played an eccentric Farnborough-based boffin who sees the whole thing coming. Sadly for British aviation the film turned out to be an eerie prophecy of the real events to come with the Comet disasters of the 1950s.
Shute will be honoured at the third International Nevil Shute Norway Conference in Portsmouth, UK, this June. For more information contact Steph Gallagher via e-mail on steph.gallagher@bigfoot.com or visit the website at http://www.nevilshute.org.
Source: Flight International
