Story of the scene - `You Only Live Twice`

One of the highlights of the fifth in the James Bond series was the Little Nellie autogyro. But the extraordinary aerial shots by legendary cameraman John Jordan came at a heavy price, reports The Independent.

The autogyro was piloted by its inventor, Ken Wallis, a former wing commander in the RAF. John Stears's special-effects team adorned it with missiles and machine guns. This did nothing to help the stability of the little machine: above the skies of Japan Wallis nearly crashed into the camera on several occasions. There were five hours of filmed flight and 85 take-offs recorded.

Jordan had developed his own technique of hanging in a harness about 18ft below a hovering helicopter. But, during the sequence when Little Nellie is attacked by two Bell 47 helicopters, one of the blades hit his extended foot, almost cutting it off.

As luck would have it there was a microsurgery conference in town, and the best surgeons in the world were able to reattach it. But when he got back to London Jordan had it amputated, feeling it was "not quite right".

A year later he was dead. While filming action footage from a B52 over the Gulf of Mexico he fell 2,000 feet to his death, his ability to keep a sure footing impaired by his prosthetic limb. Catch 22 was the last thing he did. Meanwhile, daredevil pilot and inventor Ken Wallis is still going strong, now in his mid-nineties.

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