Little Nellie was a rare breed of aviatrix the name of which has its origins in Ancient Greek. In more modern parlance, we have the familiar name autogyro… literally meaning self-turning. The way they work is the same way as a seed from a tree like a Sycamore flies and flying an autogyro is a novel form of taking to the air but one that saved 007!

Juan de la Cierva – the First Count.

The world’s first autogyro, Ciervas’s C1

A replica of the C6

The Cierva C9

The Pitcairn autogyro showing the rotor drive shaft

The RAF’s autogyro

A stamp commemorating the Russian TsAGI 1EA

The Fairy Rotordyne

The Bensen gyrocopter

Mailman Doug’s gyrocopter on the west lawn of the Capitol after he was taken into custody.

The Focke Wulf Fw-61

Little Nellie

A modern autogyro

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to L’Aéronautique magazine, Pascual Marín, Gyromike, Diego Dabrio, Johannes Thinesen, NASA, Post of Soviet Union, NACA, Fair Use, Cheesy Mike and Asterion.