LONDON – The Italian Job provides one of the greatest cliff-hangers in film history, and had no sequel to resolve the great question – did they get away?
In the 1969 film’s famous final scene, the gang, led by Michael Caine as Charlie Croker, find themselves trapped at one end of a bus teetering over the edge of a cliff while their stolen gold bullion is at the other end. “Hang on a minute lads, I’ve got a great idea,” says Croker as the credits begin to roll.
Now, the winner of a competition run by Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) might have solved the riddle of getting the gang and the gold out safely.
John Godwin came up with a three-pronged strategy to redistribute the weight-balance in the bus by knocking out the windows and draining the fuel tanks.
With windows broken, a gang member could be lowered to let the air out of the front tyres, to make the coach more stable. They could then have used an access panel to get to the fuel tank, near the rear of the vehicle, and remove its drainage plug.
One man could then safely leave the coach, and pass ballast in to weigh the vehicle down at the front. The gold could then be moved to the front and taken off.
The RSC said it had picked out Godwins theory from about 2,000 entries which ranged from the ingenious, devious and quirky to the “frankly outrageous”.
“Mr Godwin’s entry is just the kind of practical thinking Croker would have used. But he ably demonstrates the science behind the idea as well,” said Dr Richard Pike, the RSC’s chief executive.
Godwin won a holiday to Turin. His winning entry and the runners-up can be viewed at http//prospect.rsc.org/blogs/rsc/in-pictures-italian-jobentries/.
– (Reuters)