20 Things You Didn’t Know About You Only Live Twice (1967)
4. And Once When You Look Death In The Face
Alongside Ken Adam’s volcano lair and Donald Pleasence’s Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the aerial dogfight between Little Nellie and four SPECTRE Hillier helicopters helps to define You Only Live Twice.
The sequence was supervised by second unit director, Peter R. Hunt in Miyazaki on the Japanese island of Kyūshū whilst Lewis Gilbert was filming elsewhere in the country.
Cameraman, John Jordan had caught establishing shots of the sequence from an Alouette helicopter when a sudden updraft led one of the helicopters beneath him to shear off the Alouette’s skids and slice through Jordan’s foot, almost taking it clean off.
Fortunately, a former kamikaze pilot who had scouted filming locations with Cubby Broccoli, Adam, Gilbert, and cinematographer, Freddie Young managed to safely crash-land the Alouette and Jordan was rushed into surgery in the village of Elbino. However, Jordan's recovery was difficult and he elected, with Cubby’s support, to have his foot amputated and replaced with a prosthetic one.
With less than half of the aerial dogfight filmed and the Japanese authorities refusing permission to fire rockets over their national parks, the second unit relocated to Torremolinos in Spain, which resembled Miyazaki. The sequence was completed three months after the accident.