Little Nellie's Ken Wallis enjoys the high life at 90
Chuckling and waving as they soar through the skies perched on an open-air flying machine, anybody would think they were youngsters enjoying their first taste of flying.
But these ageing aviators have a combined age of 180.
There is no stopping autogyro veteran Ken Wallis, who celebrated his 90th birthday yesterday by piloting one of his famous self-built autogyros accompanied by a fellow second world war veteran.
The wing commander, who found fame when he kitted out James Bond with one of his genius contraptions, flew in to Shipdham Airport to pick up Tony Cooper, also 90.
The daredevil duo rose and dived as they circled the airfield in the helicopter-like two-seater autogyro. Wing Cdr Wallis amazed onlookers when he let go of the controls to give a double thumbs up before heading off to land on the airstrip at his Reymerston home.
"You are only as old as you feel. I intend to make a date to do this with Tony in 10 years' time," he said.
Tony Cooper, who was a Spitfire fighter pilot in the 64th Squadron during the war and is from Oulton Broad, near Lowestoft, said: "I have known Ken for a long time and in my view he is one of the great pioneers of recent flying. We decided it would be lovely for two old guys from the war to fly together for his birthday."
He said that before landing Wing Cdr Wallis had reached about 100 mph.
It was an impressive feat, but Wing Cdr Wallis revealed he had reached 136mph last week in an autogryro he calls whizzkid - one of his 19-strong collection.
The autogyro genius was a bomber pilot in the second world war and said that yesterday it was exactly 64 years since he came back from his last bombing trip in Rostok, Germany.
He began making autogyros in late 1958. Since then his machines have been used for military work, especially reconnaissance, across the world and until 1998 he held every world record for autogyros. He still holds many, including all the records for fastest speed and the fastest climb to 3,000m. He now plans to regain most of the other records.
Wing Cdr Wallis was made an MBE in 1996 for his contribution to the development of autogyros.
In the 1960s he found fame when one of his autogyros, Little Nellie, was used by James Bond in the film You Only Live Twice. Wing Cdr Wallis acted as Sean Connery's body double. "Little Nellie was on screen for seven-and-a-half minutes but for that I did 84 flights and 46 hours flying," he laughed.
Despite his achievements Wing Cdr Wallis shows no signs of retiring from the air just yet and this year also celebrates 30 years as president of the Flixton Air Museum, near Bungay.
He said: "I do a lot of air photography work for Flixton. I like to have an excuse to fly."
He added that he still enjoyed tinkering with the mechanics of his machines.
Last evening, Wing Cdr Wallis's birthday celebrations continued with bellringers at his parish church, St Peter's, ringing a quarter-peal dedicated to him.
He was patron of Reymerston Ringers millennium appeal to restore and rehang the five bells and add a new treble.
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