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Robert (Butch) Day
Galactic Ambassador
Joined: 19 Sep 2014
Posts: 1379
Location: Arlington, WA USA
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 Posted: Tue Sep 29, 2015 4:13 am Post subject: No Highway In The Sky (1951) |
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This 1951 British film from the book No Highway by Nevil Shute, predicted air disasters.
Cast
James Stewart as Theodore Honey
Marlene Dietrich as Monica Teasdale
Glynis Johns as Marjorie Corder
Jack Hawkins as Dennis Scott
Janette Scott as Elspeth Honey
Elizabeth Allan as Shirley Scott
Ronald Squire as Sir John, Director
Jill Clifford as Peggy, Stewardess
Niall MacGinnis as Captain Samuelson, Pilot (uncredited)
Kenneth More as Dobson, Co-Pilot (uncredited)
Dora Bryan as Rosie, Barmaid (uncredited)
Felix Aylmer as Sir Philip (uncredited)
Maurice Denham as Major Pearl (Tour guide) (uncredited)
Wilfrid Hyde-White as Fisher, Inspector of Accidents (uncredited)
John Lennox as Farnborough Director (uncredited)
Bessie Love as Aircraft passenger (uncredited)
Arthur Lucas as Farnborough Director (uncredited)
Pete Murray as Peter, the Radio Operator (uncredited)
Although not a sci-fi film this movie has a sci-fi element: the fictional Rutland Raindeer airplane with it;s strange tail structure. Three years after the film and six years after Nevil Shute's original novel (No Highway) there were two fatal crashes of the world's first jet passenger airliner, the de Havilland Comet. Investigation found that metal fatigue was the cause of both accidents, albeit in the fuselage and not the tail.
Can anyone find examples of other futuristic aircraft from other non sci-fi films?
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Pye-Rate
Starship Navigator
Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 598
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| Posted: Tue Sep 29, 2015 6:47 pm Post subject: |
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Having built 747s and flown several small planes I can say for certain that that the tail design would never be allowed to leave the ground!
As for the metal fatigue, it did down the aircraft.
The square windows were the cause of stress points which caused fatigue in light metals under stress, because of cabin pressurization. |
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Bud Brewster
Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)
Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17558
Location: North Carolina
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| Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2022 3:27 pm Post subject: |
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The studio definitely went all-out to make the "Reindeer" aircraft look unusual. It's appealing in a way, but it looks a bit too much like a large version of the Bat Plane. 
They didn't just build a miniature, they modified an actual aircraft for the scenes of the passengers boarding at the airport!
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I suppose the tail section we see on the actual aircraft was also used as the separate section which is shown in the hanger during the vibration test being conducted by Jimmy Steward.
Here's the trailer and the full movie (both in B&W and colorized), compliments of YouTube! 
The B&W version is much sharper, and colorization isn't very good on the other one (no surprise there, eh?), so I recommend the B&W video.
_________ No Highway in the Sky (1951) Trailer
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_____ No Highway In The Sky 1951 Full Movie HD
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_______ No Highway In The Sky 1951, Colorized
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Bud Brewster
Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)
Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17558
Location: North Carolina
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| Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2022 6:52 pm Post subject: |
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While watching the Youtue download of this movie tonight after reading Pye-rate's comment below, I realized that the premise for this movie is awesome!
Pye-rate stated that the square windows of the Reindeer represented a serious design flaw. I realized that he was right!
| Pye-Rate wrote: | Having built 747s and flown several small planes I can say for certain that that the tail design would never be allowed to leave the ground!
As for the metal fatigue, it did down the aircraft.
The square windows were the cause of stress points which caused fatigue in light metals under stress, because of cabin pressurization. |
In other words, those large, square, closely spaced windows caused the aircraft to have horizontal weak areas right down both sides of the fuselage!
I've flown on dozens of aircraft in my life — as the son of a Delta Air Lines employ, as a member of the U.S. Air Force, and as a baggage handler for Eastern Air Lines.
During all that time I've wondered why the cabin windows of the aircraft I've flown in are so small, and the spaces between them are so large! 
I always wished the aircraft could have windows like ones shown in the image below. The view from the cabin would be so much better!
But now, finally . . . I know why that would be impossible!
Windows like those shown in the image above would make the fuselage weak along the sides!
With that in mind, take a look at the amazing flight deck of the Reindeer! The spacious cockpit is terrific — with its vast array of control panels, its large crew of personnel, and (most amazing of all) its spacious view of the area ahead through the glass nose of the aircraft!
Hot damn, this looks like the bridge of a modest sized starship!
Compare this to the cockpits of modern jetliners. The pilot and co-pilot are forced to view the land ahead through cramped windows which offer a view far less panoramic than the HD televisions they have when they get home!
I'm amazed that these guys can land their planes in broad daylight — much less at night or in bad weather! '
However, the small windows in the cockpits of modern jet liners are absolutely necessary to provide the structural strength that current aircraft need!
For that reason, I think No Highway in the Sky qualifies as science fiction, because it presents us with technology we still haven't developed yet!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958) |
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scotpens
Space Sector Commander
Joined: 19 Sep 2014
Posts: 912
Location: The Left Coast
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| Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2022 11:05 pm Post subject: Re: No Highway In The Sky (1951) |
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| Robert (Butch) Day wrote: | | Can anyone find examples of other futuristic aircraft from other non sci-fi films? |
I don't know if it qualifies as "futuristic," but the 1941 W.C. Fields comedy Never Give a Sucker an Even Break features a DC-3-like twin-engine airliner with an open-air observation deck (!)
| Bud Brewster wrote: | They didn't just build a miniature, they modified an actual aircraft for the scenes of the passengers boarding at the airport!
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That looks like a composite shot with the tail section and scaffolding being a matte painting.
| Bud Brewster wrote: | Pye-rate stated that the square windows of the Reindeer represented a serious design flaw. I realized that he was right!
| Pye-Rate wrote: | Having built 747s and flown several small planes I can say for certain that that the tail design would never be allowed to leave the ground!
As for the metal fatigue, it did down the aircraft.
The square windows were the cause of stress points which caused fatigue in light metals under stress, because of cabin pressurization. |
In other words, those large, square, closely spaced windows caused the aircraft to have horizontal weak areas right down both sides of the fuselage!
I've flown on dozens of aircraft in my life — as the son of a Delta Air Lines employ, as a member of the U.S. Air Force, and as a baggage handler for Eastern Air Lines.
During all that time I've wondered why the cabin windows of the aircraft I've flown in are so small, and the spaces between them are so large! |
It wasn't so much the close spacing of the Comet's cabin windows, but rather the square corners creating stress points in the fuselage skin which eventually cracked under repeated pressurization cycles -- like bending a paper clip back and forth until it breaks.
The Comet was a beautiful aircraft, though. After the metal-fatigue issue was identified and corrected, later versions of the Comet flew successfully in both commercial and military service.
As for the fictional Reindeer airliner -- man, that's one weird-looking airplane. IIRC, there's a scene in the movie where Jimmy Stewart's character deliberately sabotages the plane by going into the cockpit and retracting the nose gear -- while the plane is still on the ground! I'm no pilot, but I believe retractable-gear planes have weight sensors that make such a thing impossible. |
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Bud Brewster
Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)
Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17558
Location: North Carolina
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| Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2022 12:51 pm Post subject: Re: No Highway In The Sky (1951) |
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| scotpens wrote: | | Bud Brewster wrote: | They didn't just build a miniature, they modified an actual aircraft for the scenes of the passengers boarding at the airport!
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That looks like a composite shot with the tail section and scaffolding being a matte painting. |
Actually it's not. It looks that way because it's a very old and faded photography which I cleaned up extensively with Paint.net. 
I couldn't find the original I used on Google to show you what it originally looked like, but I found a similar one which also shows the scaffolding.
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I did what I could with this one, but it's still not very good. At least I didn't have literally repaint certain areas that were extremely grainy.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958) |
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Captain Starlight
Solar Explorer
Joined: 22 Apr 2022
Posts: 59
Location: Area 51
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| Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2022 6:55 pm Post subject: |
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| I saw his movie on TV in the 1960s and enjoy it. The aircraft's tale section didn't look much like anything I'd ever seen on a commercial plane. But the idea of metal fatigue is a proven fact, so the story is intelligent. Jimmy Steward was terrific. |
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