Our Travel Air Arrives at Shoreham Field

On October 12th, Team Alaska's and Team Barnstormer's Travel Airs arrived by truck at Shoreham Field from Southampton  where they arrived at port from Florida a few days before.  What a relief to see our "babies" again safe and sound.  The next few days were taken up with reattaching their wings and tail "feathers".  With Keith's watchful and professional guidance and the cooperation from Colin and Nick, our planes started looking like planes again and not Soap Box Derby cars.  The rally organizer had made previous arrangements for us to use a large hangar in which to get that work done.

I managed to stay out of the way for most of this process by hanging out at the lovely Shoreham Field Terminal's Hummingbird Restaurant where I had a great view of not only planes landing and taking off, but also a Netflix production filming crew at work.  I hadn't realized it before arriving here that this art deco terminal building, that also houses a control tower, was built between 1934 and 1936.  It has classic lines and has been used as the backdrop in several films and TV shows.  In one of the Hercule Poirot features titled something like, "Death/Murder(?) In the Sky", the terminal is used to portray Le Bourget Airport in Paris of the late 1930s.  The recent movie, Woman in Gold starring Helen Mirren has a scene of the Vienna Airport during the annexation of Austria by the Nazis in 1938.  The Shoreham terminal filled in for that too.

The Netflix production is called The Crown about the royal career of Queen Elizabeth II from her marriage to Prince Phillip up to the present.  What I got to see were some scenes involving the arrival of the Queen at an airport aboard a BOAC commercial carrier.  About 80 extras dressed in early 1950s attire were milling around as they prepared for their scenes as Ladies in Waiting, journalists, ambassadors, ministers of Parliament etc.  The BOAC "airplane" was really a mock-up of just the main passenger entrance with green screens stretching out on either side of the entrance for use later in CGI editing.  An old BOAC stairs on wheels was

pushed up to the entrance.  1940s and 1950s cars also were important background fixtures.



The Smuggler getting her first glimpse of the United
Kingdom looking every bit like a race horse eager to get out of the horse trailer.

           Smuggler emerging from her
           cage.

On solid ground.  Wings resting in the back
ground.

Wings....going.............

                      on!!

(The Cessna Grand Caravan in the background above is one of the support aircraft accompanying us during the rally.)

Shoreham Field terminal building back in the day.  This is a photo mural on a wall in the restaurant dining room.

 BOAC mock-up getting ready for lights and sound system set-up.

Some film extras taking a tea break in the terminal.  I love the hats and woolen suits. The two ladies with backs to us are wearing hair nets to protect their dos before next scene.