SHORTENED VERSION OF CDIO CONFERENCE PAPER
2nd International CDIO Conference
Linkoping University
Linkoping, Sweden
13 to 14 June 2006
USING THE WORKS OF NEVIL SHUTE IN
ENGINEERING EDUCATION
P.H. Oosthuizen
Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Developing the ability to write simply but effectively, some understanding of the interrelation of engineering and society, exposure to some of the ethical aspects of engineering practice and an understanding of the difficulties that can arise when working with others in teams are important aspects of an engineering education. They can be dealt with to some extent in separate specialized courses but generally the best results appear to be achieved when they are dealt with in various ways, in several conventional engineering courses. One of the reasons that many engineering students seem to have difficulty writing effectively is that they have done very little reading on their own. It is here proposed that many of the aspects of engineering education mentioned above can, to a limited degree, be dealt with by introducing a study of some of the literary works of the author Nevil Shute into the engineering education program. Nevil Shute was born in England and studied engineering at Oxford. After graduation he worked in the aircraft industry becoming best known for his work on the R100 airship. He started his own aircraft company called Airspeed Ltd. Airspeed went on to design and construct a number of well-known and successful aircraft. Shute published his first novel in 1926 and in the late 1930’s he left Airspeed and devoted himself to writing on a full time basis. He served in various ways during the Second World War including the design and development of secret weapons. In 1950 Shute moved permanently to Australia. Shute wrote 25 books including an autobiography entitled Slide Rule. Although most of Shute’s novels do not deal directly with engineering, they are all written in a style – simple but very clear and very engaging - that clearly shows the influence of his engineering career and many deal in some way with our responsibility to society and to others. The book that most clearly deals with engineering is perhaps the novel No Highway that deals with the experiences of an engineering researcher who is forced to face the implications of what his research has revealed. This novel and Shute’s autobiography can be used in and engineering education program. For example, discussion of Shute’s experiences in industry as described in Slide Rule can be used as the basis for studies in the nature of the engineer’s role in industry and society. Other ways in which Shute’s books can be used in engineering education are discussed.
Some important aspects of an engineering education that are clearly recognized in the CDIO Initiative are the development of the ability to communicate effectively, the development of some understanding of the interrelation of engineering and society, exposure to some of the ethical aspects of engineering practice and the development of an understanding of the difficulties that can arise when working with others in teams. While these aspects of an engineering education can be dealt with to some extent in separate specialized courses, the best results generally seem to be achieved when they either partly or entirely dealt with in various ways in a number of conventional engineering courses.
One of the reasons that many engineering students seem to have difficulty writing effectively is that they have done very little reading of non-technical books on their own and as a result have not developed a real appreciation for the power and beauty of good writing and the effective use of language. As a result they often do not communicate very effectively in neither written nor oral form. It is here proposed that many of the aspects of engineering education mentioned above including the ability to communicate effectively can be dealt with in part by introducing a study of some of the literary works of the author Nevil Shute into engineering education programs. This paper is concerned with some of the ways in which this can be done.
NEVIL SHUTE’S LIFE AND WORKS
In order to fully appreciate Nevil Shute’s books it helps to have some knowledge of his life. Nevil Shute Norway was born on January 17th, 1899 in London, the younger of two brothers and the son of a senior civil servant in the General Post Office. At an early stage it was obvious that his interests lay less in things academic and more in things practical. His suffered from a stammer, an affliction that was to stay with him throughout his life, and at times this made school very difficult for him. At one point he couldn’t stand being at school and played truant for several days spending these days going to the Science Museum in South Kensington and studying the mechanical exhibits and the aircraft models. Shute’s family moved from London to Dublin in 1912 when his father was appointed Secretary to the Post Office in Ireland. Nevil Shute continued to attend various schools in England. However he was in Dublin on holiday from school during the Easter uprising in 1916 and acted as a stretcher bearer. In June, 1915, his older brother Fred died of wounds in Flanders during World War 1. After experiencing the death of his brother and having known a number of his seniors at school who were killed in the fighting in Flanders, the young Nevil Shute became quite philosophic about his future. His stammer probably saved him from the same fate as his brother as it thwarted his attempts to obtain a commission in the army and then in the newly formed Royal Air Force. He therefore enlisted in the ranks of the Suffolk Regiment and was posted to the Isle of Grain in the Thames Estuary for the last three months of the war. After the war he secured a place at Oxford University where he studied Engineering, graduating in the summer of 1922. While at Oxford he started his connection with the aircraft industry by working in an unpaid position at de Havilland Aircraft and it was Geoffrey de Havilland himself who gave Nevil Shute his first experience of flying. His first full time work starting in January 1923 was with the de Havilland Company where he was employed as a performance calculator.
He started writing in his spare time in the evenings, first poetry and then a novel. In addition he learned to fly. He finished his first novel in 1923 and sent it to three publishers who all turned it down. A second attempt to write a novel followed in 1924 with the same result. Later that year he left de Havilland to join the Airship Guarantee Co. in Yorkshire, a subsidiary of Vickers, as Chief Calculator on the R-100 airship project. This was the private enterprise project and the R-100 would compete against a state built airship, the R101, which was to be built to meet the same specifications. The Chief Engineer at the Airship Guarantee Co. was Barnes Wallis, later to become well known as the designer of the Wellington bomber and of the 'bouncing bomb' used on the dambuster raids. Nevil Shute Norway's next attempt to write a successful novel produced Marazan, which concerned aerial drug smuggling. This novel was accepted and published in 1926. At this stage he decided on the pseudonym Nevil Shute, not wanting his writing to undermine his credibility as an engineer. As the R-100 project continued he started to work on with another novel, So Disdained, a story about aerial spying. This novel was published in 1928. By November 1929 the airship R-100 was complete and ready for trials in 1930. By this time Shute was Deputy Chief Engineer under Barnes Wallis and effectively in charge of the project. The trials were successful as was a proving flight, on which Shute went, to Canada and back,. The airship was then hangared while the testing of the competing government R101 airship was supposed to be carried out. However, the R-101 actually underwent very little flight testing and then, after undergoing a number of untested modifications, it set out on a proving flight to India. However on the way to India it crashed in France killing 48 of the 54 passengers and crew, an event that led to the ending of airship development in England.
While working on the R-100, Nevil Shute had become engaged to be married to Frances Heaton, a doctor at York Hospital and at the end of the R-100 project, when he found himself unemployed and newly married, he decided to start an aircraft manufacturing company. Aviation was booming and with a senior designer recruited from de Havilland and the backing of aviation pioneer and entrepreneur Sir Alan Cobham, the firm of Airspeed Ltd. was formed. Based at first in Yorkshire, it held its first board meeting in 1931 with Shute as Joint Managing Director. Lonely Road, a novel of gun-running and political revolution, was published in 1932 and selling the film rights brought an additional welcome income. However, his next novel, Ruined City about the depression in the shipping industry, did not appear until 1938, a reflection of his concentration on the fledgling company. From initially producing gliders under license to earn some quick income Airspeed went on to design and develop a number of aircraft including the Airspeed Oxford, a twin engined trainer that was used to train most Bomber Command pilots and a total of 8751 Oxfords were built (most under license by other manufacturers). The peak for Shute was selling one of the company’s aircraft, an Airspeed Envoy, to the King's Flight in 1937. Airspeed had thus achieved success largely as a result of Shute’s efforts but this had been at the cost of little home life with his wife and two daughters except for occasional weekend cruising in their yacht. In 1938, with war brewing and orders for hundreds aircraft being placed by the RAF, the Board of the company dispensed with Nevil Shute's services, an action which he says in his autobiography Slide Rule was probably quite right - his forte was as a starter of companies and not as a runner of companies. With a generous settlement from Airspeed Nevil Shute was able to reassess his future.
Just prior to the outbreak of World War 2 in 1939 Shute’s novel What Happened to the Corbetts, his account of Britain under aerial bombing attack, was published. In 1940 Shute joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. Within two weeks, Sub Lt. Norway was seconded from his training ship, still in civilian clothes, by the Admiralty's Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development where they wanted someone with aircraft experience to work on combating air attacks on shipping. The DMWD (nicknamed the Wheezers and Dodgers) were a group of highly qualified scientists and technicians who evaluated numerous proposals for aiding the war effort, some highly successful and others less so. Amongst them was a project initiated by the Petroleum Warfare team that involved a large flame thrower firing a mixture of diesel oil and tar as a shipboard defensive weapon - an idea similar to that used in Shute’s novel Most Secret which was published in 1945. He also wrote the foreword to the history of the work of the department, The Secret War 1939-45 that was written by Gerald Pawle.
Nevil Shute’s novel, No Highway, published in 1948, covered the problems of metal fatigue and the sudden in-flight failure of structures in aircraft, almost as if he had prior knowledge of the Comet disasters of the 1950's (see the next section). Prior knowledge and second sight were themes that recurred in his novels and he uses them to effect in An Old Captivity, 1940, and In the Wet, 1953, set in the rainy season in Australia. Round the Bend, 1951, a story of a diligent aircraft engineer is set against the background of the development of a commercial air freight company.
After the war, disillusioned with the political changes and the financial restraints of post-war Britain, Nevil Shute and his family settled in Australia and his later novels reflect this change of domicile. Probably his most famous is A Town like Alice, published in 1950, a love story set firstly during the Japanese occupation of Burma and the East Indies and later in Australia.
In all of his books Nevil Shute drew on his personal experiences, whether in the aircraft industry, during wartime or when sailing. However, these are only the background settings. His real greatness as an author stemmed from his natural ability to tell a story, to build characters that are sympathetic and to write in a way that grips and holds the reader.
Nevil Shute spent most of his adult life working very long days. Such a pace would wear down even a physically fit man but he had a long history of heart problems which finally caught up with him and he died on January 12th, 1961 at the age of 61 years.
Nevil Shute finishes his autobiography Slide Rule: The Autobiography of an Engineer with a quotation that shows his affection for aircraft and the aviation industry:
“So ends a chapter in my life. Once man has spent time in messing about with aeroplanes, he can never forget their heart-aches and their joys, nor is he likely to find another occupation that will satisfy him so well, even writing novels.”
SHUTE BOOKS RELATED DIRECTLY TO ENGINEERING
Nevil Shute’s No Highway is his only novel that is more or less directly concerned with the practice of engineering. It tells the story of Theodore Honey, an engineering researcher employed by a government laboratory, the Royal Aeronautical Establishment, and undertaking work on metal fatigue. Honey is a widower with a relatively young daughter. Honey is physically unheroic, socially inept, outwardly unkempt and is given to rather bizarre religious study in his spare time with his daughter. Honey has a theory about how metal fatigue failure occurs and has predicted that fatigue failure of the tail of the Reindeer, the most technically advanced airliner of the day, will occur after about 1400 hours in the air. He is in the process of carrying out a test on an actual tail from a Reindeer to determine the accuracy of his ability to predict when fatigue failure will occur. The new director of the laboratory is on a tour of facilities one day and is given a description of Mr. Honey’s work. He is upset and asks Mr. Honey about contacting the company that makes the Reindeer concerning his predictions. The company ignores him and the chief designer bluntly accuses him of “mental disturbances” and “a scientific mental decline”. Mr. Honey is not unduly concerned because he believes that no Reindeer aircraft has enough flying hours to be near its fatigue limit. However, it turns out that this may not be true. So Mr. Honey is sent off to Canada to investigate the wreckage of a Reindeer that has mysteriously crashed. On the flight he discovers that one of the other passengers on his plane is a well-known movie actress who his wife adored. On a visit to the flight deck during the flight, Mr. Honey, who's pretty oblivious to his surroundings, discovers that he's flying in a Reindeer and a few questions to the crew reveal that this particular plane has a total flying time of just about 1400 hours. Honey tries to get the crew to abandon the flight but this advice is ignored. When the aircraft lands on the east coast of Canada, Mr. Honey again tries to have the flight ended. Again no one takes him seriously so Mr. Honey retracts the landing gear while the aircraft sits empty on the tarmac (this is possible because of a fault in the system) destroying the machine in the process. Mr. Honey's destruction of the airliner gives him heroic stature in the eyes of one of the aircraft's flight attendants: “... I wonder how many lives you've saved, Theo,” she muses. "How many people are now living who would be dead by now, or just about to die, but for your courage and your genius?”
Ultimately, Mr. Honey’s actions are justified. The tail under test in the laboratory fails at close to the predicted time and clear evidence is found that it was fatigue failure that caused the crash of the Reindeer in Canada.
Nevil Shute’s novel No Highway was made into a movie titled No Highway in the Sky which starred Jimmy Stewart as Theodore Honey, Glynis Johns as the flight attendant and Marlene Dietrich as the movie star. A number of other well-known British actors also appear in the movie.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the novel No Highway is that it was published in 1948 when the jet airliner the de Havilland Comet was in the final design stages. The first aircraft company that Nevil Shute had worked for was de Havilland, this being in the 1920’s. About a year after it had entered service, a Comet flying from Calcutta disintegrated in a thunderstorm. When investigators couldn't find any other cause, they blamed the storm. Eight months later, a second Comet blew up in a clear sky, 27,000 feet over the Island of Elba, off the coast of Italy. It was hard to recover much of the wreckage from the ocean, so that crash went undiagnosed. Then, three months later, a third Comet exploded over the Mediterranean and the whole fleet was grounded. An intense search finally led to the recovery of much of the wreckage from the sea-bed. The recovered wreckage showed the failure had occurred in the cabin area. The engineers involved in the investigation then did a huge fatigue test on an actual Comet in a hydraulic tank, this test involving repeated loading of the aircraft until failure occurred. This testing and the examination of the recovered remains revealed that the Comets had crashed as a result of fatigue failure, the same fate as that suffered by the Reindeer in Shute’s novel. One of the strange things about this is that the aircraft in the novel was called the Reindeer and that Comet, like Dasher, Prancer and so on, was the name of one of the reindeer. How did Nevil Shute come to write a novel that anticipated the Comet disasters? Many theories have been advanced but perhaps it really is just as Henry Petroski believes, that Shute just followed his engineering instinct, which was very good, and it took him where real life was eventually to take the Comet. Of course it must be realized that in the novel the Reindeer fatigue problem is in the tail and it results from aerodynamic loading. Fatigue failures of this type had occurred in military aircraft in Britain around this time. The Comet suffered from fatigue failure near the cabin windows resulting mainly from the loading that occurred due to the pressurization and then depressurization that occurred during every leg of a flight. Because the Comet was jet powered and therefore cruised most economically at altitudes much greater than those used in existing propeller driven aircraft, the stresses associated with the pressurization were much higher than those encountered in previous commercial aircraft.
The other book by Nevil Shute that is largely concerned with the practice of engineering is his autobiography Slide Rule:The Autobiography of an Engineer. There are three main sections in this book. The first deals with his early life up to the point where he leaves de Havilland to work on the R-100 airship project. The second deals with his time working on the R-100 and with the different approaches adopted by the industrial team, of which Shute was a member, working on the R-100 and the government team working on the R-101. The third main part of the book deals with Nevil Shute’s experiences in starting his own company Airspeed and of the difficulties he faced in raising financing, in choosing the direction the company was to take and in dealing with the often opposing needs of his investors and his workers. The great depression set in shortly after Shute and his collaborators started Airspeed and this made keeping the company afloat even more difficult.
The main engineering aspect of the first part of the book is the description of Shute’s wakening interest in machines and, in particular, aircraft. As already mentioned, he was at one school at which his stuttering was causing him severe problems and the masters were not helping him in any way. The only way he could deal with the problem was by playing truant. In the morning he would leave for school but instead of going there he would take the train to London where he would spend the day at the Science Museum in South Kensington studying the mechanical exhibits and in particular the aircraft models that were on display.
The second part of the book deals with the time Nevil Shute spent working on the R-100 airship project and it is filled with many fascinating engineering discussions. The R-100 airship was commissioned by the British government in 1924 as the first of what was hoped would become a fleet of swift airships linking the British Empire. The task was given to Vickers which had built airships during World War 1. However, before the contract could be signed, the Labour Party took power and decreed that two competing airships would be built, the "capitalist" R-100 and the R-101, designed and constructed by the government itself.
The R-100 was entrusted to Barnes Wallis, a gifted and inspired engineer. With a small crew (including Shute) and under austere conditions, he designed and built a great airship, within cost and schedule, which flew in 1930 from England to Montreal and back with a side-trip to Niagara Falls. Shute was aboard and the book describes that flight, including some harrowing moments above the St. Lawrence River, when (for a few minutes) the R-100 was sucked helplessly upwards by a thunderstorm, the nemesis of airships. The builders of the R-101, meanwhile, enjoyed generous support and much better facilities. But there was a down side, too, because bureaucrats meddled with the specifications, and government managers proved sloppy in the design and all too lax with tests and inspections. The engineers at the bottom of the pyramid (whom Shute occasionally met) had no say, and the schedule was pushed from above even when it became known that a poor choice of materials had weakened the canvas cover of the airship to the point where parts could be easily torn by hand. The end was a tragedy. An inadequately tested R-101 took off for a test flight to India. After crossing the English Channel it crashed in France. That ended Britain's involvement with airship development and the R-100 never flew again and was broken up for scrap.
The third part of the book describes how, with some collaborators, Shute formed the aircraft company that he called Airspeed, a company that designed and constructed aircraft. Throughout the years that Shute spent developing the company the majority of his time was devoted to raising capital and securing orders, more of his time thus being spent on business activities than on the design of aircraft. The timing for the start of the company was bad for any new venture, the great depression beginning just after the company was established. As a result Airspeed struggled constantly to make ends meet, to keep creditors at bay, and above all, to find buyers for its airplanes. It was only in 1938 that it started to show its first small profit. Its aircraft were quite good. Among other things, they pioneered the use of retractable landing gear on commercial aircraft in England. Finding buyers was however very difficult until the clouds of a new world war began gathering over Ethiopia and Spain, and shady purchasers appeared, ready to pay cash as long as no questions were asked.
Then Britain itself began arming and Airspeed could stop worrying about sales. It built bombers during the war and was ultimately swallowed up by its competitor de Havilland. As already mentioned, the board of directors of Airspeed dispensed with Shute’s services in 1938, just as orders for hundreds of aircraft for the RAF started to pour in.
Although Nevil Shute’s other books are not directly concerned with engineering activities, many of them are concerned with behaviour that is expected of engineers and with some influences of technology on society. Perhaps the novel that is most directly concerned with aspects of this theme is Round the Bend. Nevil Shute believed Round the Bend to be his best novel. The story is basically about Tom Cutter who gets into aviation the hard way before World War 2 and works his way up first in an Air Circus that toured England in the summer season, then with Airservice where he became a competent ground engineer and serviced aircraft all over the Middle East during the War. His wife commits suicide just before his return to England and he cannot face going back to work at the airfield where they had met. He buys an old Fox Moth aircraft to charter out in Bahrein. The enterprise is highly successful and his business develops so that he has to take on other pilots and engineers. He employs only locally available personnel - mainly Sikh pilots and local engineers. The rapidly developing oil industry uses his charter service to link operations between the Persian Gulf, Indonesia and Australia. There, by accident, he meets his old friend Connie Shaklin (or Shak Lin) who is a first class aircraft engineer, half European, half Asian, who joins Tom’s operation as Chief engineer. Connie's method of teaching aircraft maintenance combines the practical and the spiritual – he believes that right thinking and good work are inseparable. An ascetic and modest man, Connie is soon widely seen as a religious teacher in Bahrein and gains the respect of the local Imams. Connie’s teaching spreads throughout the Middle and Far East among ground engineers and religious leaders. This spread parallels the development of Tom's aviation business eastward from Bahrein to Australia. Shute handles the interwoven themes in masterly fashion - pioneering flying across India, Burma and Indonesia, Tom's tolerance of Connie's religious teaching and the attention it brings, the hostile reaction of Colonial authorities and Tom's ultimate support for his friend, and his love for Connie’s sister Nadezna. Round the Bend has often been compared to Robert Pirsig’s 1974 book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which deals with some similar themes although from a very different point of view. Round the Bend reveals that Nevil Shute sees the skills of the technological workplace as having social implications that reach far beyond the hangar and the machine shop. As an engineer, he recognizes that technology and technologically skilled leaders, in and of themselves, will not necessarily guarantee an ideal society. Thus, Shute advances a modified version of the technocratic utopia in which personal morality and responsibility are exalted as emphatically as technical competence. The union of the two he realizes will not come about easily, for it requires extraordinary effort and concern on the part of the individual striving to achieve it. That effort, on the one hand, must occur in the practical and economic world of the workplace, for the technologically sophisticated leaders have a responsibility toward those working for them. As Connie muses to Tom:
'When a good man employs others he becomes a slave to the job, for the job is the guarantee for the security of many men. So when a man speaks candidly in the hangar of the things, the ethics of the work. . . , he may bring others to believe in those things too, and to depend upon his words. Then he, too, is a slave to his own job, because if he relaxes his endeavours to teach men proper ways of work and life, he may destroy the faith he has created in them, and so throw them back into an abyss of doubt and fear and degradation, lost indeed.'
Moral responsibility requires as much of the individual as business responsibility, and the employer seeking to create progress must, of necessity, accept the duties of both realms of responsibility. On the other hand, the effort as Shute articulates it, carries a spiritual component. Shute acknowledges that technical training encourages, even requires, secular thinking, but argues nonetheless that technology and spirit are not only compatible, but complementary. Round the Bend has received considerable attention from both Social Scientists and Religious Scholars.
Nevil Shute’s first published book, Marazan, although not concerned with engineers and engineering, has connections to his engineering background. His main character, a pilot, acts out of a strong and clear sense of responsibility towards others, displaying the characteristics expected of a competent, ethical engineer. The book begins by quoting Rudyard Kipling’s The Sons of Martha:
It is their care in all the ages to take the
buffet and cushion the shock,
It is their care that the gear engages, it is
their care that the switches lock.
which for many years was part of the Iron Ring Ceremony at which graduating Canadian engineering students make a vow to practice as an engineer in a responsible, caring and ethical manner.
USING NEVIL SHUTE’S BOOKS IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION
Shute’s books can be used in a number of different ways in an engineering education program. Before discussing this, however, a consideration of some aspects of the books No Highway and Slide Rule that have implications for engineering education will be presented. A discussion of some of the ways in which these aspects of the books can actually used in teaching engineering will then be given.
No Highway
This book raises many questions concerning engineering ethics and the social responsibility of engineers. Among these are:
1. Was it irresponsible of Honey not to more strongly pressure the company that made the Reindeer to withdraw it from service and redesign the tail?
2. Should Honey have “blown the whistle” by releasing the story to the press if the Company that made the Reindeer would not respond to his concerns?
3. Was Honey correct in advising the famous movie star to sit on the floor with her back against the bulk-head if it appeared that the plane was going to crash?
4. Was Honey ethically correct in destroying the Reindeer rather than letting it continue to fly and so risking the lives of all on board?
5. When the wreck of the Reindeer was located in Canada, what would be looked for to prove that fatigue failure had occurred?
6. Where did the fatigue failure in the Comet occur?
7. What changes were made to the Comet after the cause of the accidents was identified in order to allow it to re-enter service?
Slide Rule
This book deals with a much wider range of engineering problems than No Highway. Some of these are listed below together with some questions that can be used in engineering education:
1. When he played truant from school due to problems arising from his stuttering Shute went to Science Museum and studied the aircraft models and other engineering exhibits. Is his interest in engineering exhibits at a relatively young age an indication that good engineers are born that way?
2. Shute provides a comparison of how their group approached the design of the R-100 and how the government group approached the design of the R-101. Are there lessons to be learned from this comparison? Was the government team unethical in some aspects of its approach?
3. Shute provides a discussion of the method used in some of the structural calculations for the R-100. He also discusses how long it took to do such calculations with slide rules.
4. It is often said that a good engineer is always prepared in some way for every eventuality. Is Shute’s discussion of his thoughts on getting out of the R100 in the event of an accident and of his purchase of the knife to help in his planned procedure an indication of an engineer’s preparation for all eventualities?
5. Shute gives a description of flying in the R-100 through a dense fog over London. Such fogs were once common. What was their cause and could this be related to some of Shute’s observations during this flight?
6. Shute explains how the long distance flight test of the R-100 was originally to have involved a flight to India and back. However when the makers of the R-100 opted to use gasoline powered engines, the test flight was changed to a flight to Canada and back. The reason for this change was that some in the government believed that the use of gasoline in the hot tropics was too dangerous. The R-101 used diesel powered engines so its long distance flight test was to be to India and back, the flight on which it was destroyed. Were the fears about the use of gasoline in the tropics in any way justified?
7. Some discussion of the general views that existed at the time about diesel and gasoline engines are given in the book. Were these views valid then and are any still valid today?
8. Shute gives a description of what it was like to walk along the walkway on top of the R100 and how even when the airship was cruising at maximum speed if one bent down one didn’t feel a strong wind blast. Was this a boundary layer effect? Check this by calculating the thickness of the boundary layer on the airship.
9. Shute gives an interesting discussion of his feelings on leaving Canada to return to England on the R-100’s test flight. Do these feelings give an indication of why he eventually left England to live in Australia?
10.Shute makes a number of comments about the design changes to the R101 and about the lack of adequate testing of this airship. Are these comments justified and what general lessons can be learned from these comments?
11.Both the R-100 and the R-101, like all other European airships, used hydrogen rather than helium, the gas that was in most American airships. Why was this? Shute also gives some figures relating the total gas bag volume to the load that could be carried by an airship. Show how these load values are arrived at. Investigate how the hydrogen for the R-100 was produced.
12.Shute makes a number of interesting comments on changes in commercial aircraft that occurred in the 1930’s. He talks in particular about the DC1 and the changes it introduced. List the major changes in commercial aircraft design that occurred in this period.
13.Shute discusses the change from wood to metal as the material from which most aircraft were constructed that occurred during the 1930’s. What were the reasons for this change?
14.Shute’s discussion of the founding of Airspeed and of the on-going problems of financing shows the mixing of engineering, business, personnel responsibilities and political considerations that can occur in industry. Discuss these and indicate whether they were particular to the time or are still relevant today.
15.Airspeed introduced a commercial aircraft with retractable undercarriages. Discuss the reasons why they did this and undertake some drag and weight calculations to see whether they were justified in taking this step. The Airspeed aircraft with a retractable undercarriage like the early Douglas Commercial aircraft such as the DC3 didn’t fully retract the undercarriage. Instead they left a portion of the wheels extending out below the aircraft. Why did they do this?
16.Shute’s discusses his feelings of responsibility to both his investors and to his workers and of how these two responsibilities could indicate the need for conflicting actions. Discuss the justifications for these feelings of responsibility to the two groups.
Attention will now be turned to the ways in which Shute’s books can, mainly by using the points discussed above, be used in an engineering education program. It is important in an engineering program to tie together the work done in different courses in order to emphasize for the students the fact that the practice of engineering involves essentially the simultaneous application of a wide range of knowledge and skills. It is also important to be constantly reminding the students of the practical applications of the material being taught. Shute’s books can be used for both of these purposes. The discussion here will be very broad because each instructor can use the material in a different way in order to complement their own style of teaching.
Communications:
As already mentioned, one of the reasons that some engineering students have difficulty in writing and speaking effectively is that they have done very little reading of non-technical books on their own and as a result have not developed a real appreciation for the power and beauty of good writing. Nevil Shute’s straightforward and relatively simple style of writing and the subjects that he writes about often appeal to engineering students including those who have not previously done much reading. Therefore assigning reading from No Highway and Slide Rule and having the students write discussion papers on aspects of these books and having them engage in discussions about the books with other students and Teaching Assistants can help to develop student communication skills while undertaking something that the majority of them find interesting. Discussions about Honey’s character , ethical responsibilities and behaviour in No Highway and discussions about how closely related the story of the Reindeer is to the Comet saga are often good bases for this type of work. Slide Rule is an even richer source of material that can be used as the basis for such discussions. For example, Shute’s early interest in things engineering can be used as the basis for a discussion of whether an ability and interest in engineering can be identified at an early age. The students can enrich this discussion by describing their own experiences. Shute’s preparation for a possible R-100 crash can be used as the basis of a discussion of whether the behaviour of a good engineer in all aspects of their life is different from that of others. Shute’s discussion of his sense of responsibility to both his investors and his workers can also be used as a discussion topic.
Engineering Science Courses:
Examples that illustrate the application of material covered in some Engineering Science courses can be obtained from Slide Rule. For example:
In Fluid Mechanics courses, the boundary layer thickness on the R-100 can be calculated and its implications for those on the top walkway can be discussed. The allowable load for the specified gas bag volume can be calculated. The reduction in the drag on an aircraft that results from using a retractable undercarriage can be evaluated and the consequences of the result discussed.
In Thermodynamics courses the validity of the fears about using gasoline in countries with high temperatures can be evaluated and the discussion about the relative advantages and disadvantages of diesel and gasoline engines can be explored. The description of the R-100 flying through the fog over London can be used in various ways in discussions of the environmental consequences of traditional methods of using coal.
In Materials courses the consequences and reasons for the change from wood to metal in the construction of commercial aircraft in the 1930’s can be discussed. The change from metal to composite materials that is presently taking place can be compared to the earlier change from wood to metal.
In Structures courses the method described to evaluate the strength of the R-100 structure can be critically evaluated and compared to how it could be done today.
Business Related Courses
Shute’s experiences in starting Airspeed and then keeping it financially afloat and the steps that had to be taken to procure orders for their aircraft can be used in discussions of the relationship between engineering and business activities. Students can be required to write papers on particular aspects of Shute’s experiences and to discuss whether experiences from the times about which Shute writes are relevant in today’s world.
Courses Concerned with Ethics
As already mentioned both No Highway and Slide Rule involve situations in which ethical decisions have to be made and which can be used as the bases for written or oral discussions of what is the ethically right thing to do in these situations. Honey’s decision to retract the undercarriage of the Reindeer, Shute’s concerns about the conflicts he feels between doing what is right for his investors and doing what is right for his workers and Shute’s views in Slide Rule that those charged with designing and constructing the R-101 behaved unethically in their approach to the design and testing of that airship can all be used as the basis for discussions of ethical aspects of engineering.
The above are just a few examples of how the writings of Nevil Shute can be used in the teaching of engineering. Many other aspects of his works can also be used for this purpose.
CONCLUSIONS
Nevil Shute’s novels and his autobiography contain many ideas and stories that can be incorporated into a program of engineering education in variety of ways. They can, for example, be used to illustrate the connection between various subjects studied as part of such an education, to illustrate the application of material being covered in Engineering Science courses, to illustrate the ethical and moral aspects of engineering practice and they can be used in the teaching of communication skills. The Nevil Shute books that can most easily be used in such a way have been discussed here and some of the ways in which they can be used in the education of engineers has been discussed.