Nevile Schute's Planes

Planes and boats are central to many of the novels of Nevile Schute. In his autobiography, Slide Rule, Schute wrote:

Kenneth Grahame once wrote that 'there is nothing, absolutely nothing-half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.' With that I would agree yet for a fleeting period in the world's history I think that aeroplanes ran boats a very close second for enjoyment. For about 30 years there was a period when aeroplanes would fly when you wanted them to but there were still fresh things to be be learned on every flight, a period when aeroplanes were small and easily built so that experiments were cheap and new designs could fly within six months of the first glimmer in the mind of the designer. That halcyon period started about the year 1910 and it was in full flower when I was a young man; it died with the second war when aeroplanes had grown too costly and complicated for individuals to own or even to operate.

Many of New England's aviation pioneers shared this love of aircraft. They simply wanted to fly or build airlines for the love of it.

Lists of the aircraft included in Nevile Schute's novels can be found here.