"The building of the Falcon had brought a taste of the space age to this remote community, and there was much gossip in the pubs as to what exactly was being built in the hangar on the shoreline." (From Once Upon A Galaxy by Arnold)
In a region that was certainly not in the Dark Ages when it came to advanced technology -- the nearby oil refineries were already using computers and a factory in a neighboring town was producing heat shield tiles for nuclear reactors -- the public knew something was up and they wanted answers.
But with the workers sworn to secrecy the local rumor mill was in overdrive. The project at the dockyard was being kept under wraps and all that the inhabitants of Pembroke Dock knew was that it was called "Magic Roundabout", taken from a popular BBC children's television program of the time.
Then in February 1979 word started leaking out that there was a flying saucer in one of the old hangars at the dockyard. With a number of local UFO sightings fresh in the memory of every resident in the town people began believe that the government's Ministry of Defense was building a spaceship.
The truth wasn't too far away and in March the Western Telegraph, Pembrokeshire's first newspaper, blew the story wide open and revealed to its readers that "a massive flying saucer has been built and flown in a huge aircraft hangar in Pembroke Dock." By the time the veil of secrecy had been lifted the spaceship had already departed the Welsh town, leaving the residents to make do with the tales being told by those who worked on it.
"The Falcon will be brought in sixteen interlocking sections by a convoy of trucks to London for re-assembly at the studios." (From Once Upon A Galaxy by Arnold)
The January morning that the Falcon left Pembroke Dock is still recalled to this day. The size of each section meant that only one could be loaded onto each truck. As the fleet of low-slung flatbeds eased their way out of the dock gates and passed the high street shops, traffic was stopped and police cordoned off sidewalks to keep the curious out of harms way. Over 20 years later Rachel MacDiarmid, who was four at the time, recounts "I can remember seeing people standing on the pavement as the convoy trundled through town, and the traffic came to a complete standstill. It was always a big deal when lorries left the dockyard, and we'd rush out of class to watch them go by. To see so many at once, each carrying what looked like huge wedges of cheese, was definitely something special -- but no one knew what they were until months later."
The roads out of Pembrokeshire were typical of the Welsh countryside -- narrow, windy and walled by very tall hedges -- so progress out of the county was slow. In those days the average journey time by car to London, some 260 miles to the east, took over half a day, but the heavily-laden trucks would have crawled the length of their journey. By the time the procession reached the wider roads west of Port Talbot the tailback was considerable. Gareth Jones, who was traveling to nearby Carmarthen, says "we were stuck just behind the last lorry for over an hour before we turned off, and all we could see was a frame made of metal. I didn't know what was under it for years. I can't believe the Millennium Falcon was only feet away from our bumper!"
The next day, when the fleet of trucks arrived in Borehamwood, Norman Reynolds put the select team of four men who had traveled up from Pembroke Dock to work re-assembling the huge steel construction in the middle of the 1,372,500-cubic foot Star Wars Stage. They spent a week overseeing the rebuild before handing the rest of the task over to the studio's gaffer and his crew. John Clark, from Pembrokeshire, oversaw the team and worked with Norman Reynolds to get the Falcon ready on time. His lasting memory of his first and only Star Wars experience was not the "ice cavern" but the Overlook Hotel set that was built for The Shining, which was also being filmed at Elstree.
Once the studio's carpenters had fitted the last few plywood panels to the steelwork, the detailing that gave the ship its final "used universe" look was added. Due to pressure from the fast approaching shooting schedule, Brian Johnson elected to use existing mechanical parts and miscellaneous pieces from car wrecks found at the numerous junkyards dotted across London, while local company Norank Engineering, situated a few roads down from Elstree's main gates, constructed the pneumatically-driven landing ramp. Cladding the Falcon took a further two months work before the final touches, including a rotating radar dish and the internal cockpit decorations, were put in place. By the start of March the set was ready.
