Like
the Aston Martin DB5 which appeared in Goldfinger and Thunderball,
'Little Nellie' had an arsenal of armaments which she used to
defend her honour. They were; twin machines guns, fixed to 100
yards using incendiaries and high explosives; a cluster of aerial
mines; twin rocket packs, forward firing on each side; two
air-to-air heat seeking missiles and twin smoke generators/flame
throwers firing astern. The majority of these were actually
designed to fire for real and were adapted from genuine armaments:
“The
weapons fitted to Little Nellie were real other than the machine
gunfire. That was 30 electrically ignited bangs and flashes firing
in sequence,”
explains Wing Commander Wallis.
“The
two guided missiles -
heat seeking - were powered by two rocket motors used to carry a
line over a sinking ship. They did not have warheads in them, but
they could have been for real. The smoke and flame throwers on the
tail were thought up for the film. Because of the weight on the
tail I rigged it up so they would be the first weapons used and
then jettisoned . The jettisoning was filmed in Spain but it was
not shown in the film. The Aerial Mines were just dropped after a
small explosive charge released them. The small rocket packs
employed modified Naval Icarus rockets. They each gave some recoil
as they were fired as low pressure guns and the rocket motors then
lit up. It would have been better to have them fire in sequence,
rather than all at once. I had been commanding the Tactical
Weapons Group at the Aeroplane and Armaments Experimental
Establishment at Boscombe Down between 1961 and 1964 before I left
the RAF and I knew the effect of firing rockets too closely one
after the other. But still, this was film making. I was able to
have some influence on the weapons, adjusting the centre of
gravity on the missiles.”
Although
Little Nellie is on screen for less than half an hour, a lot of
time and effort from many different professionals was needed for
her scenes, as he
recalls: “Some
85 flights and 46 hours in the air were involved over all the
filming of 'You Only Live Twice'. Many of them were just repetition
because of camera problems."
“I
had one forced landing, after running out of fuel while doing many
repeat shots over the active volcano Sakurajima - where 007
suddenly sees the shadows of the helicopters chasing Little
Nellie. When the Autogyro had been painted for the film, aluminium
paint had been sprayed on the fuel tank and its plastic tube sight
gauge, making it unreadable. Therefore I set my stopwatch before
setting off across the sea from Kagoshima to Sakurajima. After
many repeat shots whilst in contact with John Jordan the cameraman
in the helicopter, he called me to say I must be getting short of
fuel. I looked at my stop watch which indicated I had another half hour or
so, little realising that the hand had already been once round the dial!
The engine suddenly stopped! But I had about 3,500 feet at the
time. The island of Sakurajima is totally volcanic and covered in
rocks, but there was this one little road. I put Little Nellie
down on it, causing one Japanese motorist to apply his breaks a
bit sharply when he realised that I was landing rather than
beating up the road ahead of him."
“I
pulled Little Nellie to one side and sat on a rock - only to get
up again as it was so hot! The camera helicopter then picked up a
jerrican of fuel at Kagoshima and lowered it to me on a rope. I
took off from that piece of road and was pleased to cross the sea
back to Kagoshima. It was lucky that I did not run out of fuel
while making the crossing earlier.”
Wing
Commander Wallis also recalls the incident in which cameraman John
Jordan was seriously injured: “There
was a nasty accident in which
the cameraman John Jordan lost his leg when one of the
other helicopters collided with the camera helicopter in what
should have been a close pass. At that altitude one needs to allow
a bit more space for the control response. The pilot of the
SPECTRE helicopter survived the crash on the mountainside. ‘Slim’
Nagashima - the pilot of the camera helicopter did a fine job in
getting his helicopter down without it rolling over - since the
skid on the port side - on which John Jordan had his feet - had
been cut away. ‘Slim’
called for a pile of stone slabs to be set up and he did a spot-on
landing on them. ‘Slim’
was one of the Kamikaze suicide pilots who’s
name had not reached the top of the list when the A-Bomb ended the
war. He was a most pleasant and honourable man.”
amputated.
Despite
quickly receiving expert emergency medical attention, John Jordan
later made the decision to have his leg. However,
he was soon back behind the camera. “I
next met up with John Jordan, then with a tin leg, at Duxford in
1968 when he was filming “The
Battle of Britain”
whilst being suspended under a helicopter for some shots,”
remembers Ken.
John
Jordan returned to film the next James Bond film, 'On Her
Majesty’s
Secret Service', and captured some breathtakingly superb aerial
shots of actors skiing in Switzerland. Unfortunately, he died
during an accident, falling from an aircraft into the Pacific
ocean whilst filming the aerial scenes for the film 'Catch-22'.
Little
Nellie was not the only rotocraft to experience some problems
during the filming of 'You Only Live Twice': “Pete
Peckowski, the pilot of the Brantley helicopter seen descending
into the crater of the volcano, had a few ‘hairy’
moments, when he had lowered the Brantley into the crater of the
real volcano, Shmi Moi, at some 6000 feet,”
remembers Ken. “The
height coupled with the heat rendered it impossible for the
Brantley to lift out again, even after getting a bit of speed up.
I think he was able to get over the edge of the crater only as he
had used some fuel up and got a bit lighter.”
Following
the time establishing filming in Japan, and the accident, the film
crew moved closer to home to continue filming: “Fortunately
by the time the sad accident with John Jordan had occurred we had
done enough filming in Japan for the background to be fully
established. We were ready to do the weapon firing though. There
was a bit of time when I was back in the UK and I prepared Little
Nellie for the jettisoning of the flame and smoke throwers on the
rear of the tail, after they were used at the start of the air
combat sequence."
“Take-off’s
and landings in Spain were much less fraught. I was able to use a
rather deserted piece of road , for making the flights, not much
above sea level and not as hot and humid as Kyushu before the
typhoon season set in. After that in Japan, at 6000 feet, it was
quite cold in an open necked shirt outside my trousers!
Some
of the weapon firing was a bit fraught and had to be repeated
again and again until they got it right. The background scenery
was much less dramatic than that of Kyushu, but it matched in
quite well."
