Visiting Norfolk's Other Horatio

Visiting Norfolk’s Other Horatio seat frame he’d just vacated. He could have been left dangling On Sunday July 21st, CVCVC members made a return visit to below the crashing Wellington, but quickly gathered it up, Wing Commander Ken Wallis’s home at Reymerston Hall in jumped out and miraculously, the parachute opened. Norfolk. 25 people attended including guests from the Suffolk Healey Club which meant that the car park was dominated by BMC’s finest including my 3000 Mk3 and David Singer’s 100/4. Kenneth Horatio Wallis is a fascinating man and still with a twinkle in his eye at 97 years old as he told us his life story. A self taught engineer from a family of aviation pioneers, he started tinkering with machines at an early age and produced some interesting specials in the 1930s including a very stretched Austin Seven called the KW500 based on two chassis welded together: It was interesting that Ken said he was very glad to have been a Wellington pilot – Barnes Wallis’s geodetic structure could take a lot of punishment and it also wasn’t uncommon for the air cooled Bristol Hercules engines to have chunks of cylinder barrels shot away and still keep running to get you home. The water cooled Rolls Royce Merlin could overheat and fail when subject to the same levels of flak... although the Lancaster did have four of them! To relieve some of the downtime boredom, Ken’s inventive mind continued working in the RAF stations and he cannibalised various electrical bits and the hut blackout boards to make the first electrical slot car racing cars and track. If only he’d patented it before Scalextric came up with the idea post war. Here’s one He gained his aviation licence for the princely sum of £14 and of Ken’s original cars and track in his workshop: joined the RAF flying Lysanders and Wellingtons in the Second World War. The Wing Commander regaled us with tales of his wartime experiences. He remembered bombing a vehicle factory in Paris at very low level, watching his shadow on the ground to be sure of height before turning and realising he was looking UP at the top of the Eifel tower as the Wellington climbed away! On another occasion bad weather meant stooging around to find the target and he returned to England with the Wellington’s fuel gauges on empty and the engines running virtually on fumes. However, all airfields were fogged in and planes had instructions to land in Scotland which was impossible. After two aborted landing attempts at Binbrook in Of course, Ken is best known as an autogyro pioneer. After the Lincolnshire, the engines spluttered to a halt. The crew bailed war, he bought a flying autogyro kit and frightened himself out and Ken moved to the escape hatch, realised his parachute piloting it and with the low standard of the engineering. Inventor felt odd and turned to find it half out and wrapped around the Wallis got to work improving every aspect of the design including a new type of rotor head which is still in use today. We toured his workshop which was full of his autogyros from the early two bladed propeller models, through twin engine versions to the later closed cockpit autogyro. He even makes his own blades. The most famous autogyro is, of course, “Little Nellie” as used by 007 in “You Only Live Twice” in 1967. Ken told us that one of the Bond production team had seen a film of his flying and was interested in the autogyro for 007’s next dice with Spectre. Ken demonstrated in a car park at Pinewood Studios with a suicidally short take off run and swept up over the studio roof with feet to spare. Cubby Broccoli was sold and signed Ken up to do the stunt flying since he had a similar build to Sean Connery and Ken even appeared in this spoof poster: The autogyro was shipped out to the film location in Japan. When he arrived, everyone wanted to know when “Little Nellie” would be there... why?... well, the Services’ nickname for anyone called Wallis was Nellie after the famous pre-war music hall artiste Nellie Wallace and the name stuck. In the end, Ken flew 85 flights of 46 hours for 7 minutes of screen time in the film! The Wing Commander improved his autogyro designs and began harvesting world records which still stand today – highest, fastest and furthest all bear his name including a nonstop flight in 1974 from Lydd on the south coast to Wick near John O’Groats in Scotland – a distance of 543 miles, taking 6 hours 25 miles on just 60hp! He was still flying autogyros in 2012. There were a feast of other inventions on display from miniature steam engines to air reconnaissance cameras and much, much more that there simply isn’t room to describe. You may indeed only live once, but the Wing Commander has undoubtedly squeezed more than most into an action packed life. We left with enormous respect for a very clever and charismatic man. Stuart Black You can find more photos of our visit on the club website .

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