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Town's Star Wars History
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."
It was 70 foot in diameter and weighed nearly 23
tonnes
How the Western Telegraph broke the story on 1
March 1979
It was housed in the Eastern hangar which still
stands today
Millennium Falcon was the famous spaceship
from Star Wars
Pembroke Dock Web Project Revisited