Flying Pig above Battersea Power Station - December 1976

Legendary band Pink Floyd used the image of Battersea Power Station for their album 'Animals' ... with a flying pig hovering above its chimneys.

The legendary inflatable Floyd pig was conceived by Roger Waters and originally designed by ERG of Amsterdam in December 1976 for the photo session at Battersea Power Station which spawned the "Animals" album cover.

Roger suggested flying a large inflatable pig from the towers of Battersea Power Station. He wanted to do it for real...no photo trickery. Although the image of a pig suspended between the huge chimneys possessed a great sense of mood it was the pig itself which caught the headlines.

The day of the shoot was fantastic with a dramatic sky. First, the 40 ft. pig was inflated, but this took so long that it was not actually launched all day. The group of 11 photographers and 3 film crews stood around all day. The manager, with clever foresight, had hired a marksman with telescopic rifle to shoot down the pig if it escaped its mooring ropes and sailed off into the sky, where it would become an insurance risk. On the second day, the manager, with not quite such clever foresight, had decided to not hire the marksman for the day, for economic reasons.

The pig ascended into the flight paths of incoming jets landing at Heathrow Airport. The first sighting came from a jet pilot who landed at Heathrow, a police helicopter was sent up and sighted the pig over London. It tracked it to a height of 5,000 feet before having to return to base.

The Civil Aviation Authorities then took over and a general alert was sent out to all pilots that a 40 foot long, pink flying pig was on the loose in the airspace over the capital! The CAA lost radar contact with it at a point east of Detling, near Chatham in Kent, flying at a height of 18,000 feet and heading east towards Germany.

The pig, with a mind of its own, floated along on into Kent and descended upon a rural farmers property. One can imagine the disbelief of his wife when the farmer said to her "guess what..."

The Pink Floyd office at first slapped an embargo on information concerning the pig and then admitted that they weren't even sure that they had enough pictures of it for the album.

The roadies rescued the pig from the farmer that night, returned it to London, mended the punctures and put the pig up again so that it could be photographed the next day.

The day was cloudless, with a bright blue sky, but it was not very striking...therefore the pig was layered into the final artwork from day three into the sky of day one, which is how it could have been done in the first place.

While a different technique could have been employed to save time, money and anxiety, it also would have prevented a great story unfolding and good laugh being had by all.

Why not download a Flying Pig screensaver from www.pinkfloyd.co.uk?
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History of Battersea Power Station

The proposal to site a large power station on the south bank of the River Thames at Battersea in 1927 caused a storm of protest that raged for years. Questions were raised in Parliament about pollution which might harm the paintings in the nearby Tate Gallery and the parks and "noble buildings of London".

Now Battersea Power Station is one of the best loved landmarks after serving London with electricity for 50 years.

In the UK during the 1920s electricity was supplied by numerous private companies who built small power stations for individual industries with some of the surplus power generated going to the public supply. There was a bewildering variety of incompatible systems, high cost and jealous competition between the numerous companies. This chaotic situation caused Parliament to decree that electricity generation should be a single unified system under public ownership.

It was to be another 30 years before the electricity supply was nationalised. In the interim the formation of the London Power Company was a response by private owners to delay the imposition of public ownership. Set up in 1925 it took up Parliaments recommendation that electricity generation should be in fewer, larger power stations. This led directly to the building of the first super station, to produce 400,000 kilowatts, in Battersea.

Sir Giles Gilbert Scott was commissioned to design the building. His other buildings include Liverpool Cathedral, Bankside Power Station, Waterloo Bridge and the classic red telephone box.

The building is in fact a steel girder frame and Sir Giles designed the exterior brick cladding and the tower-like bases of the four chimneys. It is the largest brick building in Europe.

In effect Battersea is two power stations and the familiar silhouette of four chimneys did not appear until 1953 and for the first 20 years the building had a long rather than four-square appearance, with a chimney at each end. But even this appearance caused positive comments, described as a temple of power and to rank as a London landmark equal with St. Paul's Cathedral.

In 1939 a survey of celebrities voted it their 2nd favourite building when canvassed by the Architects Journal. The construction of 'B' Station was begun a few months after World War 2 to bring Battersea to a total capacity of 509 megawatts and the 3rd. largest power station in the U.K. This huge project, begun by the London Power company 30 years before, was to be completed by the British Electric Authority when the electricity supply was nationalised in 1948.

Battersea "B" station began operating in 1953 and had the highest thermal efficiency of all power stations and provided one fifth of Londons total electricity supplies, ( 28 other stations generated the rest ).

Throughout the whole of its life Battersea has been a symbol of the electricity industry to the media and the general public alike.