Have you ever wondered whether or not there was some truth in the stories of monsters in Loch Ness? Here are all of the answers.
Loch Ness Monster Explained & Loch Ness Understood: The Co-Founder of the Loch Ness Centre Provides a Personal Perspecti...
How can you lose an eight foot (2.5m) long flipper? Well we did.
In 1979, after spending some time in the States, visiting Edgerton in his lab at MIT, meeting film developer Charlie Wyckoff and working through the Academy of Applied Science's files in Concord, New Hampshire it was time to return to Drumnadrochit with material for the exhibition. I met up with my colleague, Ronnie Bremner, who had spent most his time with his cousin's wife in New York and had left me very much to work alone in Concord and Boston.
We were to fly back together from Boston to Prestwick and Dr Rines, President of the Academy, had kindly given us a model of a flipper which had been made by students at MIT.
It had been constructed based upon the flipper picture above, which is now known to be an artist's impression, not real evidence at all. It is a mystery why Dr Rines allowed the model to be based upon a picture he knew not to be real, but that is irrelevant to the story I am recounting here and analysis of the picture as evidence will follow in a later chapter.
Ronnie and I, both in the kilt, piled into a taxi with this huge fibre glass flipper poking out of one window and headed through the madcap Boston traffic across to the airport. At the Northwest Orient check-in desk we discovered that the flight was quite quiet and we hoped, without much optimism, that the flipper could be strapped across seats in the Jumbo, but they wouldn't allow this for safety reasons and it was whisked away to the cargo hold. As I had arranged for a horde of press to meet us at Prestwick I had requested that the item be one of the first off the plane when it arrived.
What a flight. This was by far the worst flight I have ever experienced in my life. As we were approaching Glasgow the captain advised us that there were storm force winds at Prestwick and we were being diverted to Copenhagen. We later discovered that the roof of Prestwick airport was blown off in this storm, which was one of the worst on record.
As the plane approached Copenhagen it was tossed about like a feather and even the wings of the Jumbo were flapping. Ronnie had made good use of the bar ... he was always a well lubricated traveller ... and so it was going to be up to me to look after the transfers.
At Copenhagen we were kept on the ground in the plane for some time while it was decided whether or not we would be flying on to Prestwick. Eventually we were told that we would be split into two smaller planes going into Glasgow Airport which had shorter runways. Ronnie and I were in the second plane operated by SAS, but by this time we had no idea which plane the flipper was on and, in any case, the press would have been long gone from Prestwick.
As we were approaching Glasgow airport we were told that the storm was venting its spleen there now and we were switched back to Prestwick. Unfortunately, when we disembarked we learned that all of the luggage had been on the other plane which had landed at Glasgow. This necessitated a bus journey to the other airport.
Eventually, after a considerable time at Glasgow Airport, we got our cases, but no flipper. Ronnie was much the worse for wear so I had to fill in the lost property forms. What does one write? What had we lost? "The flipper of the Loch Ness Monster," I put on the forms then I thought that I had better elaborate so I added a sketch and further descriptions that it was like "a giant rhomboidal surf board," "a huge greenish brown spearhead," "a solid sail, "a whale's fin," etc.
Next we had to board a BA Viscount, yes the one with propellers, for the short flight to Inverness. There was still a huge storm raging and I remember sitting in the rear seats of the Viscount waiting to taxi. A steward was standing beside us. Suddenly there was a roar and out of a porthole, we saw a jet screaming into the sky and Ronnie said nervously, "Well that one got off OK." The steward said, "Actually, Sir, that was an aborted attempt to land," which did nothing for our confidence and the bar wasn't open yet either. We both had to wait for our double gin and tonics this time.
When we finally did get into the air, I remember the plane falling like a stone and the wings swinging wildly, but soon we were above the clouds and on our way to the north.
The flipper never did show up and I often wonder if it is sitting somewhere in a warehouse in Denmark, Glasgow, Prestwick or Iceland, but we'll never know. Northwest Orient eventually compensated us with £200 for an exhibit which must have been worth at least a couple of thousand.
We had another flipper made but it was never a patch on the original. It can be seen with Ronnie and myself in the image below.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
