Flying with Goldfinger

Georgina Hunter-Jones

Test flight of the Hiller 12E4.

There is currently only one Hiller 12E4 in this country and it has had more famous passengers than most bigger, faster helicopters. These include Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who sat in it for the film VIP, and Honor Blackman, who was filmed in it for the James Bond movie Goldfinger, where the villain is flown into Fort Knox by a female pilot possibly based on Gay Absolem Barrett. It is now, after considerable rebuilding, based at Sherburn-in-Elmet where it is owned and flown by Hields Aviation.

The Hiller 12E4 is an exceptional helicopter as a walk-round shows. It has no tail fin, a fully articulated tail rotor, a downward pointing horizontal stabilizer, a forty-five degree rotor shaft, a spider over the main rotor head, separate swashplates for cyclic and collective, paddle weights on the head and a single pilot seat in the front, with an instructor set of controls at the left back, next to two passenger seats. Altogether a very unusual helicopter.

Bob Hields bought the Hiller to do flying exhibitions at the Elvington Aviation Museum, which then had no flying aircraft and no airstrip, but enough room for a helicopter. However, as so...