Pilot Frank Towns and navigator Lew Moran are ferrying a mixed bag of passengers from the Jebel oil town in the Libyan desert, among them oil workers, two British soldiers, and a German who was visiting his brother. An unexpected sandstorm forces the aircraft down, damaging it, killing two of the men, and severely injuring the German. In the book, the action takes place in the Libyan part of the Sahara.[2]
The survivors wait for rescue but the storm has blown them far off course, far away from a search area. After several days, Captain Harris marches toward a distant oasis together with another passenger. His aide, Sergeant Watson feigned a sprained ankle to stay behind. A third man follows them. Days later, Harris barely manages to return to the crash site. The others are lost.
As the water begins to run out, Stringer, a precise, arrogant English aeronautical engineer, proposes a radical solution: rebuild a new aircraft from the wreckage of the old twin-boom aircraft, using the undamaged boom and adding skids to take off. The men set to work.
At one point, a nearby party of nomadic tribesmen is spotted. Captain Harris decides to seek their help. This time, Sergeant Watson outright refuses to accompany him. Instead another survivor, a Texan named Loomis, volunteers. The next day, Towns finds their looted bodies, throats cut, and the nomads gone.
Later, Towns learns that Stringer designs model aircraft, not full-scale planes. Fearing the effect on morale, he and Moran keep their discovery secret, believing Stringer's plan is doomed. However, the aircraft is reborn, like the mythical Phoenix rising from its own ashes. It flies the remaining passengers, strapped to the outside of the fuselage, to an oasis and civilization.