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, The Flying Fish, built by Rodriquez Cantieri Navali, who had built the first successful one at Freccia del Sole. The "cocoon" was built on set.[1] It was purchased for the film for $500,000 and brought from Puerto Rico to Miami for refitting and refurbishment.[2] The hydrofoil never sailed again after the filming. It was rented as a stationary houseboat, docked at a marina on Miami's MacArthur Causeway, until it sank at the dock in the early 1980s.
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-foot 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 renamed it the Kingdom 5KR. These days Kingdom 5KR can usually be found in Antibes, France or cruising the French Riviera during the summer months.