The High and the Mighty - starring John Wayne.

Not John Wayne's DC-4. Not a DC-4. Photo of British European Airways does not imply any endorsement of British European Airways. Other commercial airlines are available. Photo by H C Hutson (my Daddy).

Just watched the 1954 film "The High and the Mighty". Starring John Wayne. It. Is. A. Classic.

Synopsis - Mr Wayne has to get off his horse and drink his milk as one of about four pilots aboard a DC-4 Turbo-prop flight from Honaluawaikiki or somewhere to San Ferisco in California, United States of America. The aeroplanium slowly loses an engine and then some fuel while the crew lose their ability to fly with only three engines or to navigate or use the radio. The motley dozen passengers (not the Dirty Dozen) variously reconcile themselves with spouses, play mouth organs and loosen their suit ties as they tie on their "Preservers".

There is a scene where Mr Wayne, co-pilot, slaps the dazed and shell-shocked pilot around and tells him to "pull yourself together you yella ... etc etc". They smoke, they drink, they tell their life stories. Mr Wayne goes back into the tail of the aircraft with a torch to check on the wires and pulley arrangements that control the flappy bits of the wings...

In one magnificent scene they decide that the aircraft needs to shed weight - so they yank up the hatch in the floor and start piling up the luggage. Mr Wayne sashays down the aisle and shouts, rather memorably, "I need a big strong man to hold me around my waist" ... but this turns out to not be a momentary loss of self-control or even an understandable plea for romantic empathy. It's so that he won't fall out of the opened cockpit door as he braces it against the headwind and the passengers toss out their own luggage. One passenger kisses her mink coat goodbye and chucks it into the Pacific.

The engines cough and shoot flame as they cross the Golden Gate Bridge, Wayne and his bitch-slapped Chief Pilot struggle manfully at the "Dan Dare-esque" controls and the navigator (in his haze of gin fumes) shouts that they are down to 180' - the Coastguard advice is then "Don't descend any further" to which Mr Wayne's reply is a "Roger that, we're trying not to..."

Well, it got me to a-reminiscing about some of my own non-dirigible aviation experiences. The sister over at Pear Tree Log is the member of the family detailed to handle the hijackings and such, I get the "pilot errors" and the maniac pilots.

Most memorable? Well, hard to say. A takeoff from Heathrow in a Jumbo that had only six passengers aboard was a good one - it seems that no-one had told the pilot that he had any passengers aboard at all and he wellied it like I've never seen before. Think "squashed back into your seat with small, squealing cabin stewards passing down the aisles like witches without broomsticks". Add to that a rate of climb that probably equated to the maximum G-Force permissible in the little Owner's Manual in the glovebox. The envelope was pushed. It was the best take-off ever but the miserable git refused to go around and do it again, even when I offered him a crisp ten shilling note. Apparently the aircraft was light with no luggage, very little fuel and they had indeed thought that they had no passengers to molly-coddle!

Had a flight in yonder far east once that experienced a little bit of turbulence [English understatement]. I was in one of the two back seats just in front of the flight staff area and every time they got up to serve some drinks (they seemed very determined to do so) they had to sit down again -so they tended to just smile and jam the bottle between my seat and my mate's seat. It was an eight hour flight. We'd hand them back another empty and they'd jam another fresh one in. I could see the wings flapping up and down in lashing rain and incredible lightning and there were people praying all over the place, some in the aisles, some with their head between their knees. My only concern was not spilling the drinks - and we had to time gulps so as not to poke ourselves in the face with the glasses when the 'plane dropped or bounced up or sideways. Great flight. P*ssed as a f*rt, yowling Tally Ruddy Ho and trying to get my lips to the edge of a wildly moving glass, that was my problem. Wouldn't have been so great if I'd been sober enough to know what was really going on and how serious it was! First flight ever where I saw the flight staff look worried. I'll never forget the way the Boeing's wings actually flapped like a bird's.

Minnesota loomed large once. Very large indeed. A nice, ordinary, regular flight and we got to the part of the landing where I guessed we were maybe five or ten feet above the concrete and I was waiting for the tortured-rubber squeal of the landing gear. Suddenly the plane twisted sideways and the nice pilot must have floored it because all of the engines began screaming fit to burst and we sailed away like an airborne crab over the terminus buildings. Just. Only just. The runway disappeared off one way and we flew another past all sorts of big solid things. Lots of people called on their various gods then too. Thank you to the designer who remembered to fit a castor on the tail-fin, just in case - it worked beautifully even though it made a hell of a scratch on the runway. I was sober for that one. I think they called it a "sudden cross-wind incident".

You won't be surprised to find that the two giggliest flights were in Australia, one in a tiny five-seater and one in a single rotor helicopter. We'll discount the commercial flight to Adelaide where the chap on the tannoy announced that we would be landing in Perth in ten minutes, doubted himself, then left his microphone on while he debated in the background about where the hell we were and finally announced "That would have been a surprise wouldn't it folks - no, I'm told we'll definitely be landing in Adelaide after all. No bloody idea why I was thinking of Perth. Thank you for flying Quantas Airlines".

The flight in the light aircraft was fine, as those little things go - I'd just got to the point where I was deciding where being sick would do least damage when our pilot announced that we would be landing - and pointed to a red-dirt track next to a pile of 50 gallon fuel drums and a grotty old garden shed. It was like something out of a Keystone Cops film. I was sitting up front and, on our third 50' bounce I heard the pilot muttering "get down and stay down you barstad" and sure enough we did. I think he was talking to his aircraft. The plane swung around to a halt in a cloud of dust, the engine backfired, coughed and died and we all sat there for a few moments in total silence. Then the pilot said "Sorry about that folks, it was a bit of fun though wasn't it?"

Total Nut Airways. Boing. Boing, boing. Tie me Cessna down, sport, tie me ol' Cessna down...

First place or the "Flight of the Bumble Bee" prize goes to a helicopter pilot we'd hired to take us out into "the bush"... Takeoff was smooth and professional, we hovered for a few seconds... and then he dipped the rotors towards the ground and started gaining forward speed... I think he last flew in Vietnam. He probably sprayed crops in Vietnam. While ferrying casualties to and from MASH units.

We swooped up for trees and then back down again. Sometimes he looped around the trees, possibly just because he could, possibly just to slingshot and gain more speed. We gave startled kangaroos an eye-to-eyelevel race while the landing struts collected undergrowth, then we'd swoop back up for more trees and take the top-most branches with us. To this day I'm convinced that he wasn't really our pilot, just a "vet" joy-rider who happened to find a helicopter with the keys and the passengers left in it.

I know now why El Popo kisses the tarmac when he lands - John Wayne is still flying. I'll be surprised if the chap below still is though. My guess is that he's upside down in a gum tree with a knife between his teeth, interrogating the koala that he is convinced shot him down...Then he'll probably tow the wreckage of his helicopter back to base on one broken leg while quoting favourite dialogue from Apocalypse Now.

Our HELLicopter pilot. Once landed on the bar of a bar in downtown Hanoi just for some peanuts. Probably likes playing the Ride of the Valkyries, very loudly, while strafing beaches.