A relatively long time ago, in a
west Wales town not too far away... arguably the most
famous spaceship in the universe was created.
In the winter of 1979 word started
to spread in Pembroke Dock that a flying saucer was
being built in an old giant aircraft hangar in the town.
Those involved were sworn to
secrecy.
For three months they worked on the
only full-scale Millennium Falcon, the spaceship from
the original Star Wars trilogy, to be built for the
films.
Production was gearing up for The
Empire Strikes Back - the second instalment in George
Lucas's epic space saga.
And much like the feverish build-up
to this week's release of Revenge Of The Sith, the sixth
and final movie in the series, fans were desperate for
the smallest piece of news of what was to come.
Marcon Fabrications, a company more
usually associated with steel fabrications for the
nearby petrochemical and oil industries, had won the
contract to build the prop for the film.
One of company's main selling
points was it was based in the eastern hangar of the
Royal Dockyard - a Grade II listed structure that once
housed the famous Sunderland flying boats based there
during World War II.
Govan Davies, who owned the
dockyard at the time, recalls the secrecy surrounding
the project.
"No-body was allowed in and they
kept it locked at all times," he said.
"It was made out of timber on the
outside of a steel frame. There were 30 or 40 men
working on it - it was a hell of a big thing."
Bizarrely, those working on the
spaceship were told they could only refer to it by the
code name "Magic Roundabout".
But Mr Davies said word soon
spread.
"Friends talk to friends. But they
still did not allow anyone in although I saw it, of
course, because I owned the hangar at the time."
Security was finally breached in
March 1979 when the Pembrokeshire newspaper The Western
Telegraph ran a picture and story under the headline
"Security Blown On Flying Saucer Secret".
Tongue-in-cheek, it linked the
spaceship to an apparent spate of UFO sightings in the
sky above the county at the time.
According to Brian Johnson, special
effects supervisor on the film, the spaceship could fly
- but only a few millimetres off the ground.
"It weighed approaching 23 tonnes
and was 70ft in diameter," he told the Official Making
of the Empire Strikes Back book.
"We fitted compressed air hover
pads on the feet to lift the thing up so it could be
pushed around without any wheels.
"The whole thing was actually
floating on a cushion of air, with about a sixteenth of
an inch between the feet and the floor.
"To get the Falcon from Pembroke it
was dismantled and brought on lorries in sections, then
put together on the sound stage at Elstree."