Geoffrey T. R. Hill

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

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, and his wife Minnie.

Flying career By 1916 Hill had learnt to fly and became a test pilot at the Royal Aircraft Factory. and fought in France with No. 29 Squadron. Invalided home, he moved back into test flying and by 1918 he was in command of the Aerodynamics Flight at the Royal Aircraft Establishment. and in 1919 climbed a Handley page W.8 up to nearly – then, a world record for an aircraft of all-up weight.

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 (NRC) in Canada in the mid-1940s. There, he made the proposal for the NRC tailless glider 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 on the design of the experimental Short SB.4 Sherpa, another tailless design, which test-flew the wing.

Personal life Hill married May Alexander on 10 October 1918 in Carrickmore, County Tyrone.