Cone of Silence (film)
Cone of Silence (also known as Trouble in the Sky in the United States) is a 1960 British drama film directed by Charles Frend and starring Michael Craig, Peter Cushing, George Sanders and Bernard Lee. The film is based upon the novel of that name by David Beaty, which is loosely based on a 1952 plane crash in Rome and subsequent investigations into the structural integrity of the de Havilland Comet airliner. The title refers to a technical term used in the low-frequency radio range. An identification of a range's cone of silence is shown early in the film. Plot
Captain George Gort is a pilot for British Empire Airways, flying the London—Rome—Cairo—Ranjibad—Calcutta—Singapore route. He is found to have been at fault after his Phoenix 1 jetliner crashed on takeoff from Ranjibad airport, killing his copilot. He is accused of rotating too early, increasing drag to such an extent that the aircraft could not achieve flying speed. Gort is reprimanded and reduced in seniority but is allowed to return to flying the Phoenix after a check flight under captain Hugh Dallas. Meanwhile, Gort's daughter Charlotte refuses to believe that he was at fault. Gort's flying skills are again called into question when a piece of hedge is found wrapped around an undercarriage leg after an unusually low approach to Calcutta, although the problem appears to have been caused by the nervous captain Clive Judd, who was in the cockpit to assess Gort and lowered the flaps too soon. In similar circumstances to those of the previous accident, Gort crashes at Ranjibad and is killed along with passengers and crew. Later, Dallas is informed by another pilot that in fact there is no hedge at the threshold of the Calcutta runway and that the piece of hedge found in the undercarriage of Gort's flight must have come from Ranjibad, where the takeoff had been flown by Judd. Dallas then discovers that the aircraft's designer had possibly withheld information on potential takeoff difficulties in warm-weather conditions. A third crash at Ranjibad is avoided by seconds when a message from the aircraft designer comes through to a crew about to take off in the same problematic weather conditions, advising them to add eight knots to the calculated unstick speed and keep the nose wheel on the ground until just before unstick speed is reached. The takeoff is successful, and Gort is exonerated posthumously. 