Robert Aldrich's screen adaptation of Elleston Trevor's novel. After their plane crashes in the middle of the Sahara Desert, the pilot (James Stewart) and navigator (Richard Attenborough) do their best to keep order among the survivors, a group of oil-men not used to the hardships of the desert. Whilst struggling to survive, the group of men also have to find a way back to civilisation and manage to design and build a new plane from the wreckage of the old one.