SYNOPSIS

Christmas Eve night, 1957 at RAF Celle, West Germany. Young pilot Freddie Hooke gets a last-minute chance to fly home and spend Christmas with his family and girlfriend. He's the last to leave before the base shuts down and he takes off in a de Havilland Vampire, a single-seater jet. His flight plan is simple, the fuel tank is full. In sixty-six minutes, crossing Holland then the North Sea, he will be back in Blighty. But gradually the plane begins to fail. First the electrics fail, and his radio dies; then the compass starts to spin aimlessly. Lost and alone above the East Anglian coastline, Freddie searches for a landing strip when a thick band of fog closes in. In desperation, he begins to give up hope, when a shadow appears in the clouds - a Mosquito fighter-bomber of World War II vintage. The plane is a "shepherd", guiding the Vampire to a safe landing, and its appearance is a gift from fate, a miracle out of time - but for one lonely pilot, the mystery has just begun. 

Based on the book by Frederick Forsyth