Behind "The Sound Barrier"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 726, 12 June 1953, Page 26

Behind "The Sound Barrier"

V HEN ‘the test pilot David Morgan was flying the Vickers-Supermarine Swift in the dives that provide some of the most dramatic moments of the British picture The Sound Barrier he found that, for the purposes of the film, the plane was too fast. He reveals this in the BBC Picture Parade programme about the film which will be broadcast at 830 p.m. on Saturday, June 20, from 4YZ and later from other main National stations. Morgan found when he was being photographed from a Vickers Valetta transport plane that getting into position for a camera shot was by no means easy, although the

two aircraft were in radio communication with each other and with the control tower. Morgan also puts into language that the layman can understand the relation between the jet plane and the sound barrier. Others heard in this programme are Ann Todd, one of the stars of the film, and her husband, David Lean, who directed it, and there are excerpts from the film’s sound track. Aviation is the theme also of another BBC programme about to start the rounds of National stations. Portrait of An Air Stewardess (4YA, 3.0 p.m., Sunday, June 21) is based on the experiences of Stewardess Sybil Tanner, who has recently resigned from the B.O.A.C. after years on the air routes of the world. Not content, however, with getting the facts from her _ subject, Eileen Hots, who wrote and produced the programme, went out and did the job herself. She attended the B.O.A.C.’s training course and worked with a stewardess on flights that took her as far east from London as Baghdad. (Incidentally, she says that when passengers found they were being waited on by a civilian it did not take them long to put two and two together and make the answer a BBC programme.) Mrs. Sybil Tanner had her first job as an air ‘stewardess with South American Airways, which later merged with B.O.A.C. She met her husband, a radio officer, when they were both serving in the Caribbean area, and they flew together until they were married, when by regulation they served in different planes. Between them the Tanners had put in 9000 flying hours up to the time Porttrait of An Air Stewardess was broad-cast-and that means something like 1,750,000 miles.