I'd definitely recommend it if you can get hold of a copy.
It's an interesting slice of engineering history in its own right -- Shute has the technical writer's skill of conveying large amounts of relatively abstruse information to the reader while making it enjoyable to learn about the subject -- and also intriguing where you can see the parallels with some of the novels he would write/was writing. I do find it a little scary just how much of the work he describes has since been taken over by computers; he was originally employed on the airship project as Chief Calculator, crunching figures non-stop to ascertain stresses on a trial and error basis and re-running calculations if and when the results failed to add up. That's an entire sphere of employment that no longer exists at all.
no subject
It's an interesting slice of engineering history in its own right -- Shute has the technical writer's skill of conveying large amounts of relatively abstruse information to the reader while making it enjoyable to learn about the subject -- and also intriguing where you can see the parallels with some of the novels he would write/was writing. I do find it a little scary just how much of the work he describes has since been taken over by computers; he was originally employed on the airship project as Chief Calculator, crunching figures non-stop to ascertain stresses on a trial and error basis and re-running calculations if and when the results failed to add up. That's an entire sphere of employment that no longer exists at all.