Richard Hillary
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Flight Lieutenant Richard H. 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.
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.
- 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 after recovering from his injuries, and killed both himself and 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.
[edit] 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)
