Aircraft parts in films

The film “Steelyard Blues” featured a couple of PBY’s but the scrapyard also had a dismantled Grumman Tigercat (!) N7627C.

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Looks like its had a chequered history since then but is now in better health 🙂

http://www.aerialvisuals.ca/AirframeDossier.php?Serial=14446

You guys missed the BIG aviation link in Star Wars… the entire mission to destroy the death star is pure Dambusters….

And don’t forget the low level attack up the “valley” on the Death Star which was based on the final sequence in “633 Squadron”

just saw that ugly painted Lightning grip on the F16 mock up in Jewel of the Nile – wonder what happened to it. Also had a NAF Corsair type grip on it

On the Star Wars subject:

The rear seats on the Millennuim Falcon are jet-fighter ejection sest but modified.

The sound effects of the Y-Wings fighters are RR-Dart turboprops, in this case that of
a Vickers Viscount at Long Beach Airport – might have been Ray Charles one?

The Millennium Falcon sound effect is a P-51 fighter at the Reno Air Races.
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In the 1978 TV show Battlestar Galactica the flight-deck of the Alliance cruiser is
an L-1011 dashboard.
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The rusty aeoplane in Waterworld was an ex-Air America Helio Courier.

There’s a complete wartime USAAF HILV runway light unit prominent in the opening Hoth hangar sequences of Empire Strikes Back.

A lot of the stormtroopers were armed with Sterlings, I hope they had more luck than I did with one, anything more than a short burst and you were killing seagulls in flight.

De Havilland Dove nose, cockpit and fuselage section as a road vehicle in the magnificent ‘Bladerunner’, and which has turned up subsequently in a few other films and TV programs I seem to recall.

You guys missed the BIG aviation link in Star Wars… the entire mission to destroy the death star is pure Dambusters….

Same went for Broomhandle mausers and Mr Solo!

The Hanningfield Metals yard also did prop destruction. It would be shipped back with copious amounts of sand. Weird seeing prop bits mixed with aircraft stuff!

Beat me to it Ian – & now why MG15 parts, even mock-up seem to go for silly money – too many Starwars fans wanting to build their own Imperial blasters! 🙁

Not quite aircraft parts but regularly seen hanging out the back of a ‘Neinkel etc, here’s a stormtrooper’s pimped MG15:

To be honest the film stuff was pretty mangled and mostly looked like utter tat, amazing what lighting does. When the word was out about Star Wars stuff the nerds descended and chucked serious money at it. So I carried on being an aircraft nerd.

I retrieved quite a few Tornado control columns from the remains of that film, one prop was an enormous steel seat that I didn’t see in the film, it had a label on it saying something like Troy Campers seat ? with a Tornado column either side (no tops) and an unmolested but bare B52 downward firing ejector seat that hadn’t been used. They used two B52 seats in the film by cutting about a foot off the top of the back, and sticking all sorts of random scrap and car parts and tubes on the back and spraying them silver. As a recognisable prop from the film they went on to sell for quite a lot after they had changed hands a few times, though in real life they looked like real tat, as do most film props.

I still have some Battle Droid bits I found, that have been lovingly, and covetously fondled by Star Wars nerds who have visited my house, but stupidly no Tornado control column that I could lovingly fondle in my home !!!!

I remember the B52 seats and a F86 canopy amongst other bits returned to the yard after filming for Star Wars finished. Funny really, as a collector of aircraft cockpits and parts, I had no interest in the film stuff. I should have bought Star Wars stuff instead of all the Phantom, Tornado, Buccaneer, Jaguar, Lightning parts I bought

The Roger Moore movie ‘Crossplot’ (1968) features a Mosquito B.35 nose /cockpit section (one of the ones used for cockpit shots in ‘633 Squadron’ and ‘Mosquito Squadron’) but painted white or light grey as I recall.

Didn’t a couple of Vickers Vimy engines crop up in the background in an old Doctor Who episode?

This was mentioned in ‘Aeroplane’ some years ago. I recall it was Vimy nacelles and engines from a replica aircraft (I think Shawcraft Models made them). They ended up on the backlot at Shepperton Studios and thus appeared in the background in some shots in the second Amicus Dalek movie (Dalek Invasion Earth 2150 AD) starring Peter Cushing (1966). Colin

Derwent combustion chambers were used in Star Wars as lamps, a droid head and as the speeders engine, get around huh 🙂

http://www.therpf.com/f11/star-wars-cantina-bar-109450/

The ultimate recycling could be the use of the Millennium Falcon as a building in Blade Runner

Here is an oldie, my damaged brain suddenly remembered, In Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy the BBC TV series, (not that atrocious Hollywood film), In the scene where Slartibartfarst is taking Arthur Dent down into the planet Magrethia, the craft he is piloting, he is steering it with a Lightning grip, I don’t have a copy of it but noticed it years ago. Red Dwarf has used I think a few different Ejector seats then latterly custom made seats.

XF940 I had the same problem, probably with the same dealer, he had a large consignment of training Tornado JP233 runway denial bombs, as well as a dispenser unit, oh they will be good for film work he said and wouldn’t sell me just one, there were a couple of stillages of them, complete, and in excellent condition with parachutes, all clearly marked drill for training on them. The next time I saw them after they had been left outside for a long time, they had all been damaged and ripped apart for some reason, and were incomplete and worthless, I was so annoyed at such an idiotic and brainless attitude the usual, I have it and you don’t or can’t. No one had used them and I think they just all went to scrap in the end, one of many similar incidents, including F4J J79 engines with too high an asking price eventually battered wrecked and looted, with holes in them because no one would pay the stupid asking prices.

I had forgotten about Mad Max, the aviator character (forget which film he was in) wore Battle of Britain period MKIVb flying goggles complete with the scarce flipshield they can command silly prices these days, sorry to bang on about flying kit but it is all related to aviation 😉

The first Indy film has a Boeing yoke in that Lufty futuristic plane, B707 me thinx.

In the past, prop buyers used to buy from my stall at Aerojumbles – the weirdest stuff. Helicopter PSPs were used in Tomorrow Never Dies (The one with the Russian submarines) with cyrillic writing as escape units – I have one somewhere.

The guy who provided those worked on numerous Bond movies. He also built a Batmobile for a Keaton movie using major lumps of Gnat.

I have a B8 grip that was modded for use on a Mad Max movie.

This one always tickled me when I was younger … Anyone remember the Gerry Anderson TV series UFO? It had a flying submarine called Sky1.

Often seen were these pair of (I think) Meteor grips set up as a sort of yoke….

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And the same setup for their UFO Interceptors too….

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