This book opens with a description of the last leg of a flight from Karachi to London in 1930.
The plane involved is a secondhand de Havilland Moth; the occupants are two young men from India, Aspy Engineer (his real name) and RN Chawla.
Their purpose is to win a handsome cash prize and a trophy to be awarded to the first Indian national to fly solo from Karachi to London, or vice-versa.
The last leg should have entailed a couple of flight hours from north France to London, but the weather turned foul.
With no map, no radio, and no weather forecast to help them, our heroes were blown off-course. Aspy Engineer once described navigation as, “you have to smell your way around”.
They were hopelessly lost over the North Sea for five hours before eventually landing in Thetford,…