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very small Autogyro. He grounded this experimental machine before flying his completely new design, the principle of which was retained from his first experiments but in 1961 the “WALLIS WA-116” had its first flights at the “Armament Experimental Establishment, Boscombe Down. where he was then commanding the Tactical Weapons Group. At this time he & his family were living at Church Lane, Southwick in Sussex.

Ken was awarded the Alan Marsh Memorial Medal by the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1963, for his, ‘Outstanding contribution to the knowledge of rotary-winged flight’. He later received the, ‘Segrave Trophy’ for showing Skill, Courage and Initiative” On his return to the United Kingdom his career in the RAF seemed to be stuttering to a halt. True he was the top in armaments but at the time armaments was a dirty word.

His Commanding Officer suggested he should see the Air Ministry only to be told by one of those desk-bound warriors in London, “Trouble with you, Wallis is that you’ve been a boffin, a backroom boy, too long. You want to get up the sharp end. Have a spell as engineer-officer on the station. Get up the Sharp end!” This to a man who had been an operational pilot throughout the war and who had just returned from the United States where he had been testing P36’s carrying nuclear weapons.

That settled it for Ken, he put in a request for retirement from the service. Though with some regret, He moved his family to Reymerston Hall, in September 1963 a two-hundred year old house in Norfolk where he would have plenty of room to design, build and develop his auto gyro The area outside the house was ideal for use as a runway. David, his son, helped with the research and the start up but preferred photography and now works world wide & is resident in Ireland.

Reymerston Hall is some twelve miles west of Norwich. The first Wallis built autogyro made its maiden flight from there in 1963 becoming air born in 25 metres. It climbed to 300 metres in less than a minute. Since those early days Ken has taken virtually all the World Autogyro Records, Class E-3 and E-3a (Under 500kg). These include non-stop Distance -1003 Kms. Duration 6 hrs 25mins. Altitude 5644 metres. Speed. 190 km/hr, Time to climb to 3,000 metres. He is still breaking records at the age of 85, the Civil Aviation Authority have tried hard to ground him on the grounds of age!

But have not succeeded so far.

Ken Wallis went to Brazil with an Italian film crew who had hired one of his machines. The film was called, “ Nick Carter Against Lady Lister.” His work involved flights over the Amazon and Brazilian jungle. The producer was so impressed that he made Ken fly under every river and railway bridge he could find. On one occasion, while flying along the coast, Ken noticed there were clouds of sand several hundred feet up, he also noticed pieces of palm tree and leaves flying past.

Ken decided to fly over the sea to reduce the vertical gusts resulting from the wind over the near vertical mountains only to encounter sand and salt water blowing in the air about him At this point he saw a large water spout forming as the column connected clouds and water just beside the Autogyro. Ken later learnt that he had flown through a ‘Ventana’ with hurricane force winds of over 120 knots! He rode out the storm which gradually subsided.

Later he doubled for Sean Connery as James Bond completing all the flying sequences in the 007 film, “You only live twice”. The autogyro used was XR 943

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