[rollei_list] Re: VERY OT; Nevil Shute
- From: "Allan Derickson" <alland435@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 15:53:58 -0800
Nevil Shute is probably best known in the US for On The Beach which was made
into a movie starring Gregory Peck in 1959.
I recall a book of his set in England during WWII about an airplane
designer. I can't remember the title.
Allan
>
> Now, back to Nevil Shute Norway. His
> autobiography, SLIDE RULE, has left us with the only living narrative
> of the birth and career of His Majesty's Airship R.100, and I happen to
> have an interest in rigid airships. To make a long story short, there
> was a meeting in 1944 at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London to
> determine Postwar British aviation policy. (HINT: the US left this
> one up to private enterprise and made out like a wolf amidst a pack of
> rather slow-witted sheep, tore the heart out of the state-sponsored
> companies of Europe and Japan. Them was the days, as they say.) Shute
> was sent as the rigid airship expert by the Admiralty -- he was then a
> 'wavy navy' Commander or so. This meeting has only been recorded in
> detail once, by the late Sir Peter Townsend, in his work on HM A/S
> R.101. Townsend was at that meeting and we have no reason not to trust
> his recollection that it was Nevil Shute who vetoed any concept of the
> British returning to rigid airships. One can imagine the conversation.
>
> "Lord almighty, Nevil, you were there from the beginning."
>
> "Not quite, Bernard. I came in late, gave it my best and now I know
> that we need to have a jet-powered cargo and passenger aircraft. I
> disagree with His Lordship over there about the Brabazon. I would
> concentrate on the jet plane. We are worlds ahead of these Yankees on
> this, so let us exploit that lead in postwar aviation."
>
> And so the monkey runs round the flagpole.
>
> Slide Rules are a serious subject worthy of study.
>
> Nevil Shute was a serious author worth serious thought. To my
> knowledge, limited as it is, no one has ever done that. Don't you
> Rolleifolk be urging me to write "How Did We End Up In the Alice? The
> tale of Nevil Shute Norway'. I am in a very distant touch with his
> surviving daughter but, at the same time, I need to do an article on
> the adaptive lenses for the Rolleiflex TLR's, the Magnar and the
> Duonar and the Mutars. It is grand to be retired.
>
> Be well, Rollei People!
>
> Marc
>
>
> msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!
>
---
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