45 Fun Facts About Thunderbirds

Jeff Tracy's sons all take their first names from which group of real 1960s Americans?

The Mercury Seven astronauts lent their names, and Jeff, an early lunar astronaut himself, raised all five boys with Grandma's help after his wife Lucille died.

What slides aside at the foot of the Tracy Island villa so Thunderbird 1 can launch vertically?

A swimming pool hides the hangar, a design Den of Geek found alarming given the risk of 'a great big rocket ship appearing out the bottom' of it. It still ranked the island the seventh-best secret base in film and TV.

What lining Tracy Island's runway swings outward to clear Thunderbird 2's wingspan at launch?

Palm trees tilt back as the transporter taxis out, then the craft tips up a ramp to launch, which the series says beats its VTOL thrusters for fuel efficiency.

Which marque lent its name and a real £100 grille to Lady Penelope's pink six-wheeled FAB 1?

Rolls-Royce sent a genuine radiator grille, Spirit of Ecstasy included, reasoning the show might 'inspire a child to own one, one day'. Its designer put two axles at the front purely for looks.

Which reply by Penelope's chauffeur in Thunderbirds became the title of a co-creator's 1991 memoir?

'Yes, M'Lady' titled that autobiography, and the co-creator devised the chauffeur's aristocratic employer to appeal to Americans, who she said saw Brits as Cockneys or manor-house ladies.

Which Star Trek: The Next Generation actor directed the 2004 live-action Thunderbirds film?

Jonathan Frakes blamed the flop on opening against Shrek 2 and Spider-Man 2 and on poor reviews.

In Terror in New York City, which landmark collapses while being moved on rails to a new site?

The Empire State Building was being shifted for a Midtown regeneration, and its fall traps reporter Ned Cook in an underground river. Gerry Anderson based it on a real store that was jacked up and moved inch by inch.

Which British pop-punk band took the 2004 Thunderbirds film's theme song to UK number one?

Busted's 'Thunderbirds Are Go' reached number one, but Gerry Anderson called the film it promoted 'the biggest load of crap I have ever seen'.

Which BBC children's show showed viewers how to build their own Tracy Island when the toy sold out?

Blue Peter's Anthea Turner built one from household waste, and so many viewers wanted the instructions that the BBC stopped sending them and released her demonstration on video.

The giant reptiles of Attack of the Alligators!, APF's first use of live animals, were really what?

Juvenile crocodiles from a private zoo in northern England stood in, and an anonymous tip-off brought an RSPCA inspector to the studio, who took no action. One got loose mid-shoot and sent the effects director sprinting from the tank.

Gerry Anderson coined 'Supermarionation' during which series, APF's first for Lew Grade's ITC?

Supercar was in production when the name was minted as a promotional tool, Anderson admitted, to set APF apart from Muffin the Mule and Flower Pot Men; it never described a real process.

Why were the Thunderbirds puppets' heads noticeably too large for their bodies?

The lip-sync solenoid sat inside each head, and when Captain Scarlet moved it into the chest, the heads shrank to realistic size.

Which feature did Thunderbird 2's designer add purely so it would stand out beside real aircraft?

Forward-swept wings were pure aesthetics: 'All aircraft have swept-back wings, so I thought I'd sweep mine forward,' the designer said. Graeme Shimmin rates it the best aircraft in fiction.

Which composer wrote 'The Thunderbirds March' for Gerry Anderson's puppet series?

Barry Gray's brass-heavy march was recorded at London's Olympic Studios in 1964, and a variation of it replaced a planned closing song, 'Flying High'.

What colour is Thunderbird 4, the rescue submersible piloted by aquanaut Gordon Tracy?

Yellow Thunderbird 4 is the slowest of the Thunderbirds, so it usually rides to the danger zone aboard Thunderbird 2.

Which pod vehicle appears in Pit of Peril, City of Fire and The Duchess Assignment?

The Mole is one of the few pod vehicles to appear in more than one episode, and commentator Fred McNamara ranks it fifth among all the Anderson shows' vehicles.

Which Tracy brother, an off-duty painter and pianist, pilots the heavy transporter Thunderbird 2?

Virgil's voice changed between series: David Holliday, the cast's only American, went home after Series One and Jeremy Wilkin took over for Series Two and the films.

Gordon Tracy won an Olympic title in which stroke before joining International Rescue?

Butterfly was Gordon's Olympic event, and a hydrofoil speedboat crash at over 400 knots later left him in hospital for months.

Jeff Tracy, the Air Force colonel who founded International Rescue, grew up on a wheat farm where?

Kansas wheat-farmer's son Jeff rose to colonel in the US Air Force; his mother, the farmer's widow, later joins the island household as Grandma.

Whose real voice, heard often by the crew, became the Cockney accent of Lady Penelope's chauffeur?

A pub wine waiter at the Kings Arms in Cookham, Berkshire, supplied the accent, and Gerry Anderson took the chauffeur's voice actor to lunch there to hear him.

David Graham voiced Brains and Gordon, plus which regular he reprised in the 2015 remake?

Parker, a former cat burglar and safe-cracker, got the same voice 50 years on; Lady Penelope had rescued him from crime by recruiting him into her spy work.

Under which alias does Brains build the Skythrust airliner, a name the 2015 remake later made real?

Hiram K. Hackenbacker is one of several covers: the board behind Skyship One knows him only as 'Mr X', and the 2004 film went with Ray Hackenbacker instead.

Which Tracy Island resident, daughter of Jeff's manservant, is youngest brother Alan's girlfriend?

Tin-Tin was conceived, a co-creator wrote, to 'redress the balance' of a male-dominated puppet cast, and Jeff paid for her maths and engineering degree in gratitude for her father's service.

The Hood, International Rescue's masked enemy, plots from a temple in the jungle of which country?

Malaysia's jungle temple holds a statue of his half-brother, before which the Hood stands to make his telepathic calls.

In the pilot Trapped in the Sky, the Hood bombs which atomic-powered airliner on its maiden flight?

Fireflash cannot land without setting off the Hood's bomb, so International Rescue's Elevator Cars race beneath it and catch it on the runway.

How was the Series One finale Security Hazard written to recoup money after two episodes overspent?

As a flashback clip show it needed just 17 minutes of new footage, after Attack of the Alligators! and The Cham-Cham had both blown their budgets.

In final episode Give or Take a Million, a child prize-winner visits Tracy Island for which holiday?

Christmas on the island even gets snow: Brains has everyone shut their eyes, then switches on a snow-making machine he built after hearing the odds of a white one were slim.

Which earlier Anderson series did well enough for Lew Grade to commission Thunderbirds?

Stingray's success bought a budget that made Thunderbirds APF's costliest production and one of the most expensive TV series made up to that time.

Which Thunderbirds effects chief designed its craft, then did effects for James Bond and Superman?

Derek Meddings died of cancer in 1995 during post-production on GoldenEye, and the finished Bond film was dedicated to his memory.

Stanley Kubrick, impressed by Thunderbirds' effects crew, hired several of them for which film?

2001: A Space Odyssey got its effects supervisors from a puppet show whose typical episode carried around 100 effects shots, completed at up to 18 a day.

In 1966's Thunderbirds Are Go, the spacecraft Zero-X flies the first crewed mission to which planet?

Mars was Zero-X's goal, and rock formations there come to life as 'rock snakes' that fire on the crew, forcing them to lift off early.

Which pop star and The Shadows appear as puppets in a dream sequence in 1966's Thunderbirds Are Go?

Cliff Richard signed up in Portugal, where he and Shadows member Bruce Welch owned homes near the Andersons, and performs 'Shooting Star' as Cliff Richard Jr.

In the 1968 film Thunderbird 6, which vintage biplane is finally unveiled as the sixth Thunderbird?

A Tiger Moth Alan had restored saves the Skyship One passengers, and Jeff laughingly agrees the old biplane shall become Thunderbird 6.

Weta Workshop built the miniatures and CGI for 2015's Thunderbirds Are Go in which country?

New Zealand's Weta got the job after its founder visited Gerry Anderson at Pinewood and won his approval for a revival, co-produced with ITV Studios and Pukeko Pictures.

Which actor, as the voice of Jeff Tracy, delivers the title sequence's '5, 4, 3, 2, 1' countdown?

Peter Dyneley's archive countdown was reused in the 2015 remake's titles and launch sequences, half a century on; the English-Canadian also voiced airport chief Commander Norman.

Shigeru Miyamoto's fondness for Thunderbirds shaped the talking-head animation in which Nintendo series' N64 game?

Star Fox 64's team had characters' mouths simply pop open and shut like a puppet's, which also cut the amount of animation work.

Tracy Island, the hidden base from which International Rescue launches, lies in which ocean?

Pacific seclusion hides the base, and when outsiders visit, 'Operation Cover-Up' swaps the brothers' uniformed wall portraits for off-duty ones.

Which 1963 rescue inspired Thunderbirds?

A German mine rescue at Lengede turned into a race against time as rescuers waited for drilling equipment, which inspired a rescue outfit that brings its own gear.

Which carmaker built the 2004 Thunderbirds film's working FAB 1 after the original marque declined?

Ford adapted its own eleventh-generation Thunderbird, a redesign Gerry Anderson strongly disliked; one look at the picture, he said, and 'I'm out'.

Which Twister and Apollo 13 actor played ex-astronaut Jeff Tracy in the 2004 Thunderbirds film?

Bill Paxton saw Jeff as 'a kind of teacher', and took the young cast out for a meal on arriving in London to build the family bond.

Fresh from House of Sand and Fog, which Oscar winner played the Hood in the 2004 Thunderbirds film?

Ben Kingsley took the part because his children were fans, and his Hood swaps the puppet's hypnosis for telekinesis and levitation.

In 2015's Thunderbirds Are Go, Jeff Tracy is presumed dead; where do his sons eventually find him?

Trapped in deep space, Jeff is brought home aboard the 'Zero-XL', a spacecraft assembled from the five main Thunderbirds, in the final series' closing arc.

Thunderbird 3, the space rescue rocket, blasts off from beneath which Tracy Island building?

The Round House is the island's guest accommodation, and its circular shape also inspired the design of Thunderbird 5.

What does the Hood repeatedly try to obtain, only to lose it on the one occasion he succeeds?

Photos of the rescue machines are his obsession: the one time he films Thunderbirds 1 and 2, he flees in a grounded light aircraft, crashes and loses the pictures.

Which Indian Ocean nation's North Island stood in for Tracy Island in the 2004 Thunderbirds film?

The Seychelles' North Island hosted the start of filming in March 2003, before the shoot moved to Pinewood Studios and London, with Cliveden House in Buckinghamshire standing in for Lady Penelope's mansion.