Flight Lieutenant Richard Hope
Hillary (born 20 April 1919 in Sydney
, Australia - died 8 January 1943) was a Battle of Britain pilot who died during
World War II. He is best known
for his book
The Last Enemy,
based upon his experiences during the Battle of Britain.
Hillary
was the son of an Australian government official and was sent to
England to be educated at Shrewsbury School
and Trinity College, Oxford
. Whilst at Oxford, he was secretary of the
Oxford University Boat
Club and president of the
Rugby Club, and he joined the
Oxford University Air Squadron in
1939.
Hillary was called-up to the Royal Air Force in October 1939 and
joined
No. 603 Squadron RAF at RAF Hornchurch
in 1940.
Richard Hillary writes about his first experience in a
Supermarine Spitfire in
The Last
Enemy:
- The Spitfires stood in two lines outside, 'A' Flight
pilots' room. The dull grey-brown of the camouflage could
not conceal the clear-cut beauty, the wicked simplicity of their
lines. I hooked up my parachute and climbed awkwardly into
the low cockpit. I noticed how small was my field of
vision. Kilmartin swung himself on to a wing and started
to run through the instruments. I was conscious of his
voice, but heard nothing of what he said. I was to fly a
Spitfire. It was what I had most wanted through all the
long dreary months of training. If I could fly a Spitfire,
it would be worth it. Well, I was about to achieve my
ambition and felt nothing. I was numb, neither exhilarated
nor scared. I noticed the white enamel undercarriage
handle. "Like a lavatory plug," I thought.
- Kilmartin had said, "See if you can make her talk."
That meant the whole bag of tricks, and I wanted ample room for
mistakes and possible blacking-out. With one or two very
sharp movements on the stick I blacked myself out for a few
seconds, but the machine was sweeter to handle than any other that
I had flown. I put it through every manoeuvre that I knew
of and it responded beautifully. I ended with two flick
rolls and turned back for home. I was filled with a sudden
exhilarating confidence. I could fly a Spitfire; in any
position I was its master. It remained to be seen whether
I could fight in one.
On 3 September 1940, assigned to 603 Squadron, he had made his
fifth "kill" when he was shot down by a
Messerschmitt Bf 109 flown by
Hauptmann Helmut Bode of II./
JG 26
- I was peering anxiously ahead, for the controller had given
us warning of at least fifty enemy fighters approaching very
high. When we did first sight them, nobody shouted, as I
think we all saw them at the same moment. They must have
been 500 to 1000 feet above us and coming straight on like a swarm
of locusts. The next moment we were in among them and it
was each man for himself. As soon as they saw us they
spread out and dived, and the next ten minutes was a blur of
twisting machines and tracer bullets. One Messerschmitt
went down in a sheet of flame on my right, and a Spitfire hurtled
past in a half-roll; I was leaving and turning in a desperate
attempt to gain height, with the machine practically hanging on the
airscrew.
- Then, just below me and to my left, I saw what I had been
praying for - a Messerschmitt climbing and away from the sun.
I closed in to 200 yards, and from slightly to one side gave
him a two-second burst: fabric ripped off the wing and black smoke
poured from the engine, but he did not go down. Like a
fool, I did not break away, but put in another three-second
burst. Red flames shot upwards and he spiralled out of
sight. At that moment, I felt a terrific explosion which
knocked the control stick from my hand, and the whole machine
quivered like a stricken animal. In a second, the cockpit
was a mass of flames: instinctively, I reached up to open the
hood. It would not move. I tore off my straps and
managed to force it back; but this took time, and when I dropped
back into the seat and reached for the stick in an effort to turn
the plane on its back, the heat was so intense that I could feel
myself going. I remember a second of sharp agony, remember
thinking "So this is it!" and putting both hands to my eyes.
Then I passed out.
Unable to
quickly escape from his burning aircraft, he suffered extensive
burns to his face and hands, but did eventually escape the aircraft
and bailed out into the North Sea where he was rescued by the
Margate
lifeboat.
- Gradually I realized what had happened. My face
and hands had been scrubbed and then sprayed with tannic acid.
My arms were propped up in front of me, the fingers extended
like witches' claws, and my body was hung loosely on straps just
clear of the bed.
- Shortly after my arrival in East Grinstead, the Air Force
plastic surgeon, A.H.
McIndoe, had come to see
me. Of medium height, he was thick set and the line of his
jaw was square. Behind his horn-rimmed spectacles a pair
of tired, friendly eyes regarded me speculatively.
- "Well," he said, "you certainly made a thorough job of it,
didn't you?" He started to undo the dressings on my hands
and I noticed his fingers - blunt, captive, incisive. By
now all the tannic had been removed from my face and hands.
He took a scalpel and tapped lightly on something white showing
through the red granulating knuckle of my right fore-finger.
"Four new eyelids, I'm afraid, but you are not ready for them
yet. I want all this skin to soften up a lot
first."
- The time when the dressings were taken down I looked
exactly like an orang-utan. McIndoe had pitched out two
semi-circular ledges of skin under my eyes to allow for contraction
of the new lids. What was not absorbed was to be sliced
off when I came in for my next operation, a new upper
lip.
Richard Hillary is one of the best known of McIndoe's "
Guinea Pig Club", having endured three
months of painful
surgery in an attempt to
fully repair the damage to his hands and face in order to return to
combat duty. Hillary managed to bully himself back into a flying
position even though, it was noted in the officers' mess, that he
could not even handle a knife and fork.
Hillary returned to
service with 54 Operational Training Unit at RAF Charterhall
after recovering from his injuries, and died with
his radio operator-observer Wilfred Fison when he crashed his
Bristol Blenheim on 8 January 1943
during a night training flight, with the aircraft coming to rest on
Crunklaw Farm. It has been alleged that one of the major
reasons for this crash was that Hillary was not in fact physically
able to fully control his aircraft due to the burn damage to his
hands not being repaired to the level necessary for the RAF to
legitimately return him to active service.
In 2001 a memorial to
Hillary was unveiled at the site of the former RAF Charterhall near Greenlaw
, Berwickshire
.
He is
today remembered in his alma mater of
Trinity College,
Oxford, by an annual literature prize, a portrait outside
the college library, and an annual lecture in his honour.
This lecture is delivered in the Gulbenkian Lecture Teatre in the
English Faculty, Oxford. It has been delivered by
Ian McEwan,
Philip
Pullman,
Julian Barnes,
Mark Haddon,
Jeanette Winterson,
Sebastian Faulks and
Howard Jacobson.
Further reading
- Hillary, Richard H. - The Last Enemy ISBN
0-88751-103-1 (1942)
- Ross, David - Richard Hillary: The Definitive Biography of
a Battle of Britain Fighter Pilot and Author of The Last Enemy
ISBN 1-904010-03-2 (2004)
- Faulks, Sebastian - The Fatal Englishman: Three Short
Lives: Christopher Wood, Richard Hillary, Jeremy Wolfenden
ISBN 0-375-72744-2 (1996)
- Burn, Michael - Mary and Richard: the story of Richard
Hillary and Mary Booker ISBN 0233982809 Pub: Deutsch,
(1988)
- Higham, Charles and Moseley, Roy – Princess Merle: The
Romantic Life of Merle Oberon ISBN 0698112318 Pub:
Coward-McCann, New York (1983)
References
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