4 September 2013
Wg Cdr Kenneth Wallis MBE, the man who created and flew the gyrocopters used in the James Bond movie “You Only Live Twice” in addition to a distinguished Royal Air Force and engineering career, sadly passed away on Sunday 1 September. He was in his 97th year.
Last year he received the Guild Award of Honour from the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators in acknowledgment of an extraordinary life in aviation.
Wg Cdr Wallis had a life-story that was a match for Ian Fleming’s fictional James Bond, or equally his ever-inventive boffin Q, for whom some believe Wallis was the inspiration. After making his first solo flight at Cambridge in 1937 in a de Havilland Gipsy Moth, Wallis flew Westland Lysanders and completed 24 wartime missions over Northern Europe in Vickers Wellington bombers, before spending twenty years as a scientist and pilot engaged in armament and weapon research.
His activities included wartime work in examining and testing captured enemy armament, creating the optimum bombing-up procedures for the English-Electric Canberra – Britain’s first jet bomber – and as Officer Commanding the Tactical Weapons Group, weapons testing for the Mach 2 fighter later known as the Lightning. He also spent two years on detachment to the US Air Force flying the giant, ten-engined, Consolidated RB-36 “Peacemaker”, cold war nuclear bomber.
Wallis’s work with lightweight rotary-winged aircraft spanned five decades and between 1968 and 2002 he set 34 world records, many of which he still held at the time of his passing. Among the records still standing is the 3km speed world record for autogyros which in 2001, he set at 207.7 kph. Last year, when he received lifetime achievement awards from both the Royal Aero Club and the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators, he was still flying in his 75th year as a pilot.
Speaking in tribute, His Honour Judge Tudor Wyn Owen QC, the Master of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators said, “Wg Cdr Wallis will be remembered for his ingenuity, energy and perseverance over a lifelong involvement in aviation, and for his charming personality.”
