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John Turner, injured in a wartime air crash, is told he has one year -or less- to live. How he decides to spend his last few months makes just as moving and readable a story today as when this novel was first published in 1947. The meeting will be held on Sunday 22th April. We will arrive from noon and will have lunch at 13:00 hour. If the weather is good, we will lunch on the balcony, with a wonderful view over Terlet airfield and all the activity that is going on there.After lunch we will discuss the book. Depending on the attendees, the discussion will be in Dutch or English. The participation to this meeting is free, but for the consumptions that you will have and the lunch. The address is: Restaurant De Thermiekbel Apeldoornseweg 203 6816 SM Arnhem The Netherlands tel: +31 26 445 5450 If you want to come to this meeting, please let me know in advance. joost.meulenbroek@mac.com tel: +31 6 54 791 307 FROM Martin Aubury ozaubury@homemail.com.au
I’ve enjoyed reading Shute for the past 60 years or
more and followed in his footsteps as an aero
engineer; though not as a novelist.
I agree with Tom Wenham (Feb 2018 Newsletter) that there’s little technical similarity between fatigue failure of the Reindeer’s tailplane as told in No Highway and failures of the Comet fuselage five years later. But neither is there much similarity to wing strut failures on the Twin Pioneer. I respectfully suggest there’s a much closer similarity to fatigue weakness of the Boeing 707's tail. This caused loss of 707 operated by Dan Air on approach to Lusaka Airport, Zambia, on 14 May 1977. Subsequently 38 other 707s were found to have similar incipient cracks. See: https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1979/1979%20-%202343.html I also wonder if Shutists are familiar with Flight Magazine archives. They will find many contemporaneous accounts of Shute’s achievements if they search “N.S.Norway” or Airspeed. Do Shutists realise that more Airspeed Oxfords were built, to train bomber pilots, than the more famous Lancasters and Mosquitos? FROM Ron Hall rnhall@dsl.pipex.com
I have recently been reading the biography of
Anders Lassen VC (Anders Lassen VC.MC. of the
SAS by Mike Langley, published by Pen and Sword
UK). In this book there is an interesting
account of a small force of Commandos sailing a
requisitioned Brixham fishing smack, The Maid
Honor, 70 feet long with a sixteen and a half
foot beam, from Poole Harbour to Fernando Po off
the coast of West Africa where, from the Maid
Honor, they successfully raided and captured two
German ships, a small German Tanker, The
Likopmba and a 7,600 ton Italian Liner and
Merchantman the Duchessa d’Aosta. Both ships had
remained at anchor for a year but continually
worried the Admiralty as they had the
possibility to become supply ships to aid
Surface Raiders or U-Boats. Both captured ships
were sailed to Freetown Sierra Leone. The
Duchessa was then sailed to Scotland and became
the Empire Yukon where it was used as an Allied
transport. The whole story of the voyage and
capture of the two ships is told at length in
the book but the really interesting part as far
as our members are concerned is that the Maid
Honor was fitted out in a quiet corner of Poole
Harbour known as Russell Quay on the wooded West
side of the Arne Peninsular - just sandbanks
covered in heather and a little sandy cliff used
by the crew as a firing range. The men were
encouraged to believe that the craft’s innocent
appearance might help them escape detection if
she were employed in a cross-Channel raid. The
Commander of the Expedition, Gus March-Phillips,
was kept busy arming and equipping the fishing
smack for the long and probably dangerous
voyage. I quote -Lieutenant-Commander Norway
RNVR (Nevil Shute the author) examined the
Maid’s suitability for fitting with a spigot
mortar which, mounted on a steel plate in the
deck, would launch small , tail-finned bombs at
surfaced U-Boats. A test firing exposed the risk
of using this weapon on a yacht, red hot
particles of the charge burned holes in the
Maid’s mainsail.
Having read this part of the history of the voyage there is no doubt in my mind the Neville Shute must have got the idea for ‘Most Secret’ from visiting this boat and saw the possibilities of the novel, which as all readers will know deals with a disguised fishing boat which raids German vessels off the coast of France. I recommend the book to anyone, especially the part about the voyage to Fernando Po via Freetown and Lagos, a voyage of 3,185 miles to Freetown, sailed by weekend sailors! Quite incredible for the time. FROM Philip MacDougall philip.macdougall@btinternet.com
Nevil Shute Norway spent the final months of
World War One in uniform, guarding North
Kent from an increasingly unlikely possible
German invasion. He was posted to the Isle
of Grain. In writing my recently published
book ‘When the Navy Takes to the Air’, I
became more and more convinced that it was
while serving on the Isle of Grain that the
future author, Nevil Shute, gained a unique
insight into the highly advanced
experimental work being undertaken at the
Marine Aviation Experimental Establishment,
formerly in the hands of the RNAS, that had
been established on the Isle of Grain at the
beginning of the war. I say this, because
two of the key aviation ingredients in his
second published novel, ‘So Disdained’
(1928), are drawn straight from the secret
work being undertaken on the Isle of Grain
at the time he was stationed there. Apart
from the fact that every advanced machine
with any potential for naval use was tested
there, the air station was working on aerial
photography and explosive devices that would
turn night into day. Maurice Lenden
photographed Portsmouth Harbour at night.
Most crucially, for the plot of So
Disdained, Maurice Lenden, a former Great
War pilot was flying a machine fitted with a
silencer. At the Isle of Grain, aeroplanes
were being fitted with Rolls-Royce III
engines that included just such a device.
The experimental silencers fitted to those
engines at the Marine Aviation Experimental
Establishment worked through the sound of
the engine being muffled through the
elimination of back pressure by way of
cooling the gases that were emitted from the
engine.
FROM J.B. Roberts creegah@atoah.com I read my first Shute opus in 1944. I wonder if there is anyone who pre-dates me? |
And another month has passed. With 2 events coming up, one in the USA and 1 in the Netherlands, we can have a good time. From the Netherlands, where the weather is lovely, but very very cold, see you all next month.
