Jimmy Stewart is "Towns" who flies his dilapidated aircraft around the North African oilfields. When once such trip ends in a crash, they find themselves stuck in the desert short of water, and of ideas as to how to get themselves home. Until that is, the rather superior "Dorfmann" (Hardy Krüger) concocts a plan to perform industrial surgery on the wreckage and maybe get them airborne again. What now ensues is a tautly directed series of escapades as the personalities of crew and passengers clash; the desert takes it's toll on the sanity of some, the Bedouin on the lives of others - but can th...