Yellow Submarine at Liverpool John Lennon Airport

The Yellow Submarine at Liverpool John Lennon Airport is a steel model about 15.6 m long and 18 tons, standing on a traffic island at the airport entrance in Speke. Around 80 apprentices at the Cammell Laird shipyard built it for the 1984 International Garden Festival, and it moved to the airport in 2005.

Built in a shipyard for a garden festival

The submarine predates the airport's Lennon name by 17 years. In 1984 roughly 80 apprentices at the Cammell Laird shipyard made it for the International Garden Festival in Liverpool, with a yard draughtsman, L. Pinch, credited with part of the design. It copies the craft from the 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine, which took its title from the 1966 song on Revolver.

At the festival it was the centrepiece of an apple-shaped maze garden on a Beatles theme. Inside was a mock control cabin fitted with genuine submarine equipment, reached by two spiral staircases.

Size

It measures about 15.6 m (51 ft) long and 4.6 m (15 ft) high, and weighs 18 tons.

From Chavasse Park to Speke

After the festival closed, the submarine spent several years in Chavasse Park in the city centre, where drivers coming in from the south could see it. It was in poor shape by then, and in 2005 it was moved to a traffic island at the entrance to Liverpool John Lennon Airport. The airport's chief at the time, Neil Pakey, pointed out that other airports display a Concorde. A Geograph photograph from February 2023 shows it still there.

The Lennon statue next door

Inside the terminal is Tom Murphy's 2002 bronze of Lennon, described on our airport statue page. Neither has anything to do with a bridge. We found no Lennon bridge in Liverpool, and the city-centre Lennon is David Webster's figure on Mathew Street, about 11.6 km away.