I read Neville Shute’s No Highway a couple of weeks ago and really enjoyed it, so much that I even checked the movie made from it, No Highway In the Sky from the library and watched it last night. As per usual, the book was better than the movie.
A scientist (Theodore Honey) at the Royal Aircaft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough has developed a theory about fatigue in light alloys and has obtained a test article to test his theory. Since the book was written in 1948, the theory is laughable now, but that itsn’t important. When Dr. Scott takes over the metalurgical section at the RAE, eventually he gets around to asking Dr. Honey what he’s working on. So when Dr. Honey explains he’s testing his new theory of fatigue and he’s using a Rutland Reindeer tail to do it with. Dr. Scott, clearly an engineer, instantly notices a detail that escaped Dr. Honey’s attention – the Rutland Reindeer is a brand new plane that has just become basis of trans-Atlantic travel for the national (and monopoly) airline BOAC. When Dr. Honey tells him that his theory predicts the tail will fail at 1440 flight hours (shades of the deHavilland Comet), the story really begins.
The story is straightforward and told without villains. Just the natural working of different organizations and their interests provide conflict. The biggest reason I liked the book was that it was about aviation engineers – and there’s no better 1-2 combo than that. Sadly, it’s a combination rarely seen in print or pictures. Since I’ve worked on a couple of different British projects, I had a ball reading about the RAE and Boscombe Down. I was also pleasantly surprised by how little aeronautical engineering has changed in 50 years. The same personality times, the same organizational types, right down to the manager who flips from the biggest doubter that something is a problem to being the champion of the solution.
