Wednesday, August 21, 2019

The Night My Number Came Up - Michael Redgrave (1955) - Kai Tak Airport - Part 2

A few of the buildings at the old Kai Tak can be seen on film including the old control tower (Gwulo.com has a colour picture of it supposedly from the same year which makes me think this film was most likely shot earlier) and at least one of the buildings that formed RAF Kai Tak.

Control Tower

If you look closely at the image below you can see two buildings in the far distance and I believe that the one centre left is the RAF Officer's Mess that now hosts the visual arts department of the Baptist University. There appears to be another similar building lower on to the left of that one. Given the angle it is also possible that the lower building is the still-existing RAF HQ Building which now houses a family crisis support centre. But it could also easily be a building that has since been demolished to make way for various housing estates.

What about the white building in the foreground? It's used as the terminal building in the film and I wonder if it was the so-called Sea Wall terminal building that was in use at the time the film was made. It could easily be one of the other older (and unused) buildings that stood along the sea front next to the 07/25 runway. If there are any Kai Tak aficionados reading this then please feel free to add any corrections.


Note the runway map in the background of this last picture. This is a true reflection of the layout at the time and a more detailed version can be seen here. Make a note of runway 13/31 (running NW/SE) because it will crop up in a later post.

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