Author: Peter Mahon Publisher: ISBN: Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 312
Book Description
"On 28 November 1979 a DC10 passenger jet airliner owned by Air New Zealand, carrying out a tourist flight from New Zealand to Antarctica and back, flew in broad daylight into the lower slopes of Mount Erebus in Antarctica. There were no survivors of the crash and 257 people lost their lives. The New Zealand Government appointed me to be a Royal Commissioner of Inquiry to investigate the disaster and to report to the Government my opinion to the cause ... The aircraft was navigated by the inertial navigation system which has for many years dispensed with the need for human navigators on commercial flights ... The INS on this DC10 was found to have been operating accurately during the flight, so the aircrew had always known where they were. But following the disaster there were many senior pilots in Air New Zealand who suspected that the standard flight track to Antarctica had not been the flight track which had been typed into the aircraft computer on the morning of the flight. They believed that the standard flight track had been changed without the knowledge of the crew. As things turned out the theory proved to be correct ..."--Peter Mahon, Foreword.
Author: Joey Sheehan Publisher: Canterbury Books ISBN: 1647046602 Category : Transportation Languages : en Pages : 323
Book Description
Judgment on Erebus is narrative nonfiction at its most compelling and unsettling. Commanded by one of Air New Zealand’s most meticulous and cautious pilots, a sightseeing airliner inexplicably crashes into an active Antarctic volcano in broad daylight, causing the world’s fourth-worst aviation disaster. The New Zealand government’s Office of Air Accidents Investigation soon publishes an official report attributing the disaster to pilot error. Skeptical, an aroused public demands an “independent” official inquiry. Realizing that he badly needs a second investigator to confirm the first one’s findings, an imperious Prime Minister selects for the post a distinguished High Court judge he believes will be a team player. After conducting his own extensive inquiry into the crash, though, Justice Peter Mahon reaches a verdict on the cause(s) of and culpability for the devastating loss of life on Mt. Erebus that is totally incompatible with the government’s earlier in-house report. All hell breaks loose. One of the two official investigators must be gravely mistaken—or lying—but which one and why? Years of political, legal, and judicial pyrotechnics commence to answer that question. Meanwhile, a stricken nation mourns its 257 dead. Sheehan takes a fresh look at Mahon’s evidence for concluding that the national airline itself was responsible for the tragic loss of life, which the government immediately tried to cover up with a well-organized, multi-tentacled, multi-phased, and aggressive attempt to pin the accident on the well-respected dead pilots. She also movingly relates what befell the judge after an enraged Prime Minister turned on him. This twist gives a superb political and legal thriller its moral center: a Goliath-against-David struggle over the truth.
Author: Neal L. Asher Publisher: Pan Macmillan ISBN: 9780330441544 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 580
Book Description
Science fiction. The Polity is under attack from a melded AI entity with control of the lethal Jain technology, yet the attack seems to have no coherence. When one of Erebus wormships kills millions on the world of Klurhammon, a high-tech agricultural world of no real tactical significance, agent Ian Cormac is sent to investigate, though he is secretly struggling to control a new ability no human being should possess, and beginning to question the motives of his AI masters. Further attacks and seemingly indiscriminate slaughter ensue, but only serve to bring some of the most dangerous individuals in the Polity into the war. Mr Crane, the indefatigable brass killing machine sets out for vengeance, while Orlandine, a vastly-augmented haiman who herself controls Jain technology, seeks a weapon of appalling power and finds allies from an ancient war. Meanwhile Mika, scientist and Dragon expert, is again kidnapped by that unfathomable alien entity and dragged into the heart of things: to wake the makers of Jain technology from their five-million-year slumber.
Author: Robert E. Allinson Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 1402029802 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 371
Book Description
This is a pioneering work. Recent disasters such as the tsunami disaster continue to demonstrate Professor Allinson’s thesis that valuing human lives is the core of ethical management. His unique comparison of the ideas of the power of Fate and High Technology, his penetrating analysis of the very concept of an "accident", demonstrate how concepts rule our lives. His wide-ranging investigation of court cases and government documents from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, and from places as diverse as the USA, UK and New Zealand provide ample supporting evidence for the universality and the power of explanation of his thesis. Saving Human Lives will have an impact beyond measurement on the field of management ethics.
Author: Antony Lentin Publisher: Haus Publishing ISBN: 1908323175 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 238
Book Description
Sir Edgar Speyer was a conspicuous figure in the financial, cultural, social and political life of Edwardian London. Head of the syndicate which financed the construction of the deep "tube lines" and "King of the Underground", he was also a connoisseur and active patron of the arts who rescued the "Prom" from collapse, enhanced the nation's musical and artistic life at his own expense and directed the funding of Captain Scott's Antarctic expeditions. Speyer and his wife, the concert violinist, Leonora Speyer lived in fabulously magnificent style. Early in the early summer of 1914 they stood at the peak of their success and celebrity in London society. Within weeks, on the outbreak of war, they became pariahs, objects of suspicion and aversion. Despite having been a naturalised British citizen for over 20 years and an ubiquitous public benefactor, Speyer found himself ostracised by society and mercilessly harried by the Northcliffe press. Under the Aliens Act of 1918, Speyer was summoned in 1921 before a judicial enquiry which found him guilty of disloyalty and disaffection and of communicating and trading with the enemy. He was stripped of his citizenship and membership of the Privy Council. Pilloried by The Times as a traitor, Speyer vehemently denied the charges, but he never returned to England thereafter and never forgot his ordeal.
Author: Mark Zuehlke Publisher: D & M Publishers ISBN: 1553658361 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 309
Book Description
With its trademark "you are there" style, Mark Zuehlke's tenth Canadian Battle Series volume tells the story of the 1942 Dieppe raid. Nicknamed "The Poor Man's Monte Carlo," Dieppe had no strategic importance, but with the Soviet Union thrown on the ropes by German invasion and America having just entered the war, Britain was under intense pressure to launch a major cross-Channel attack against France. Since 1939, Canadian troops had massed in Britain and trained for the inevitable day of the mass invasion of Europe that would finally occur in 1944. But the Canadian public and many politicians were impatient to see Canadian soldiers fight sooner. The first major rehearsal proved such a shambles the raid was pushed back to the end of July only to be cancelled by poor weather. Later, in a decision still shrouded in controversy, the operation was reborn. Dieppe however did not go smoothly. Drawing on rare archival documents and personal interviews, Mark Zuehlke examines how the raid came to be and why it went so tragically wrong. Ultimately, Tragedy at Dieppe honors the bravery and sacrifice of those who fought and died that fateful day on the beaches of Dieppe.
Author: Robert Edric Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 1429973331 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 352
Book Description
The Broken Lands-a treacherous labyrinth of ice through which the fabled Northwest Passage was sought for centuries. Cabot, Frobisher, Hudson, Parry and Ross were all defeated, and the names on the maps testify to their despair: Bay of God's Mercy, the Devil's Cape, Savage Isles, and Repulse Bay. Determined to succeed where the rest had failed, Sir John Franklin-"the Lion of the Arctic"-set sail from Greenland in 1845. His two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, were last sighted in August of that year, after which the entire expedition-all 135 men-disappeared. For three years, the two ships were trapped in the Arctic ice. Eventually the slow vise of the ice pack and spoiling provisions proved to be too much. Nothing was heard of Franklin's expedition for over a decade, and only many years later did the world begin to learn of their terrible, agonizing fate. In this enthralling, richly inventive novel, Robert Edric recreates what possibly happened to this doomed expedition.
Author: Peter Mahon
Author: P. T. (Peter Thomas) Mahon
Author: Joey Sheehan
Author: Paul Holmes
Author: Gordon Vette
Author: Neal L. Asher
Author: Robert E. Allinson
Author: Antony Lentin
Author: Mark Zuehlke
Author: Robert Edric