Geoffrey Terence Roland Hill, (1895 – 26 December 1955) was a British aviator and

aeronautical engineer Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is sim ...

Early life

Geoffrey Terence Roland Hill was born in 1895, the son of Michael J. M. Hill, Professor of Mathematics at the

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

, and his wife Minnie. He was educated at

University College School ("Slowly but surely") , established = , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent day school , religion = , president = , head_label = Headmaster , head = Mark Beard , r_head_label = , r_he ...

. While he was in his early teens he won prizes as a builder of model aircraft. In 1912, with his younger brother, Roderic, they built a model aircraft for the Children's Exhibition at Olympia, which was followed by a nearly-successful full-sized glider. Subsequently, he went up to University College, where he obtained a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University o ...

in 1914 and joined the

Royal Aircraft Factory Royal may refer to: People * Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name * A member of a royal family Places United States * Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Royal, Illinois, a village * Royal, Iowa, a c ...

as a graduate apprentice.

Flying career

By 1916 Hill had learnt to fly and became a test pilot at the Royal Aircraft Factory. He obtained a commission in the Royal Flying Corps as 2nd lieutenant, and fought in France with No. 29 Squadron. In late 1916 he was awarded the

Military Cross The Military Cross (MC) is the third-level (second-level pre-1993) military decoration awarded to officers and (since 1993) other ranks of the British Armed Forces, and formerly awarded to officers of other Commonwealth countries. The MC ...

and in January 1917 he was promoted to the rank of captain (temporary). Invalided home, he moved back into test flying and by 1918 he was in command of the Aerodynamics Flight at the Royal Aircraft Establishment. When the war ended he joined Handley Page, Ltd., as their chief test pilot/aerodynamicist, and in 1919 climbed a Handley page W.8 up to nearly 14,000 ft – then, a world record for an aircraft of 1,500 kg all-up weight

Aeronautics

Hill designed a series of tailless aircraft, the

Westland-Hill Pterodactyl Pterodactyl was the name given to a series of experimental tailless aircraft designs developed by G. T. R. Hill in the 1920s and early 1930s. Named after the genus Pterodactylus, a well-known type of Pterosaur commonly known as the pterodactyl, a ...

s, from the 1920s onwards. After the last Pterodactyl flew in 1932, he ended his association with

Westland Aircraft Westland Aircraft was a British aircraft manufacturer located in Yeovil, Somerset. Formed as a separate company by separation from Petters Limited just before the start of the Second World War, Westland had been building aircraft since 1915. D ...

in order to take up a chair as Professor of Engineering Science at

London University The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree- ...

. In 1939 he headed a project in Pawlett, near Bridgwater, Somerset, investigating methods for cutting the cables on enemy barrage balloons; recovery from stalling after contact with such cables was an important part of his work there. Hill was British Scientific Liaison Officer at the

National Research Council National Research Council may refer to: * National Research Council (Canada), sponsoring research and development * National Research Council (Italy), scientific and technological research, Rome * National Research Council (United States), part of ...

(NRC) in Canada in the mid-1940s. There, he made the proposal for the

NRC tailless glider The NRC tailless glider, also called the NRL tailless glider, was a two-seat tailless research glider designed by the National Research Council of Canada and built by the National Research Laboratories, at the instigation of G.T.R. Hill who had ...

for the study of the control and stability of tailless aircraft. The glider design was built and flew from 1946 until the project ended around 1950. Hill proposed the "aero-isoclinic" wing in 1951, in an attempt to control the undesirable effects of bending in the long, thin swept wings then becoming widespread. He subsequently worked with David Keith-Lucas of

Short Brothers Short Brothers plc, usually referred to as Shorts or Short, is an aerospace company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Shorts was founded in 1908 in London, and was the first company in the world to make production aeroplanes. It was particu ...

on the design of the experimental

Short SB.4 Sherpa The Short SB.4 Sherpa was an experimental aircraft designed and produced by the British aircraft manufacturer Short Brothers. Only a single example was ever produced. The Sherpa was developed during the 1950s for the purpose of testing a nove ...

, another tailless design, which test-flew the wing.

Personal life

Hill married May Alexander on 10 October 1918 in

Carrickmore Carrickmore () is a village in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It is situated in the historic barony of Omagh East, the civil parish of Termonmaguirk and the Roman Catholic Parish of Termonmaguirc between Cookstown, Dungannon and Omagh. ...

County Tyrone County Tyrone (; ) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the thirty-two traditional counties of Ireland. It is no longer used as an administrative division for local government but retai ...

References

Bibliography

External links

*
Obituary in ''Flight''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hill, Geoffrey T.R. British aerospace engineers English test pilots Military personnel from London Fellows of the Royal Aeronautical Society Recipients of the Military Cross English aviators 1895 births 1955 deaths Royal Flying Corps officers