Disco Volante (ship)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Disco Volante is a fictional ship in the James Bond novel, Thunderball (1961) and its 1965 film adaptation of the same name. It was a hydrofoil craft owned by Emilio Largo, an agent of SPECTRE. It was purchased with SPECTRE funds for £200,000. The craft plays a pivotal role in the seizure and transportation of two nuclear warheads. It is a high-tech ship that possesses a number of smaller underwater submarine craft.

The real craft used in the film was a hydrofoil ferry built by Rodriquez Cantieri Navali, who had built the first successful one at Freccia del Sole. The "cocoon" was built on set.^[1] The hydrofoil was docked at a marina on Miami's MacArthur Causeway until the very early 1980's.

In the unofficial (non-EON Productions) 1983 James Bond film Never Say Never Again, the ship was renamed The Flying Saucer, the English translation of Disco Volante, and owned by Maximillian Largo. In real life, the 282' yacht that was used in long shots for the film was known as the Nabila and was built for Saudi billionaire, Adnan Khashoggi. The yacht was later sold to Donald Trump who renamed it Trump Princess. Later Trump sold it to Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud who christened it the Kingdom 5KR.

[edit] References