Q Planes

England, just before the war. Newly designed test aircraft are disappearing over the sea on their first flights. No wreckage, no radio. The Air Ministry will not admit it, the factory says nothing, nobody will talk. Major Hammond takes the matter on: a man who walks about with an umbrella and speaks as though he takes nothing seriously. The test pilot Tony McVane and Hammond's sister Kay, a reporter, get pulled in as well. Between them they try to find the arrangement behind the missing planes. Tim Whelan directs the British film; eighty-two minutes, with Ralph Richardson as Hammond, Laurence Olivier as McVane and Valerie Hobson as Kay. It was released a few months before the war broke out. It runs its spy thriller alongside comedy, and what stays with you is Richardson's investigator.