Battle of Britain’s secret schoolgirl saviour
Documentary reveals how officer’s teenage daughter used her maths expertise to help redesign the Spitfire
‘In air combat, the margins are very fine. It’s reasonable to think the outcome could have been quite different’
THE secret story of a schoolgirl who helped engineer the new generation of Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes that played a crucial role in winning the Second World War has been revealed for the first time to mark the Battle of Britain’s 80th anniversary.
In the summer of 1934 Hazel Hill, a 13-year-old girl from north London, was approached by her father, Captain Fred Hill, a scientific officer in the Air Ministry who was trying to make the case for the new generation of fighter planes.
Despite Hazel’s youth, Capt Hill drew upon his daughter’s mathematical intellect and discussed plans with her as to how it could be possible to arm Spitfires with eight machine guns, as opposed to the four which had been originally proposed. The number was seen as “radical” by Capt Hill’s superiors, who were concerned the sheer weight of the guns would overload the planes, and it would be impossible to accomodated them.
With a calculating machine and the latest gun-firing analysis, Captain Hill and his teenage daughter sat at the kitchen table and mocked up calculations of how to make it work.
Together they devised how it would be possible to arm what would become the new generation Spitfires and Hurricanes with eight Browning .303 machine-guns.
They calculated the exact distance the fighters had to be from the enemy to successfully hit their target and showed that to successfully bring down a German bomber in two seconds – the amount of time a pilot could be expected to keep an enemy aircraft in sight – it would have to have eight machine guns that could fire one thousand rounds a minute.
At a crucial meeting of armament specialists at the Air Ministry in July of that year, Capt Hill presented a graph showing the results of their work.
However, only he and his superior officer were aware of the part that his daughter had played in making the calculations. The specifications for the new Spitfire and Hurricanes were subsequently changed to include eight guns.
In the book I Hold My Aim by Group Captain Claude Hilton Keith, a British-canadian aviator who fought with the Royal Air Force in the Second World War, the former airman wrote that “the deliberations of that conference made possible, if not certain, of the winning of the Battle of Britain, almost exactly six years later”.
The Battle of Britain, which began 80 years ago today and was waged from July 10 until Oct 31 when 3,000 fighter pilots saved Britain from Nazi invasion when they defended the skies against the Luftwaffe.
More than 500 RAF pilots and aircrew were killed in the battle, which led Winston Churchill to declare: “Never was so much owed by so many
to so few” in a speech that summer.
Group Captain James Beldon, of the Royal Air Force, said Hazel’s important contribution as a teenager was “vital to this country’s survival”.
“Eight was seen as radical,” he said in the BBC documentary The Schoolgirl Who Helped to Win a War.
“In air combat the margins are very, very fine and it’s quite reasonable to think that the outcome could have been quite different.” Hazel’s reward was permission to sit briefly in the cockpit of the plane she had designed.
She went on to have a career in medicine as well as raising four sons with her husband, Chris.
One of them, Frank, said: “If you are a 13-year-old girl at your kitchen table you can change the world.”
Another of her sons, Ted, added that history “should remember her as being one of the people who made a real difference”.
“The eight guns were only just enough to win the battle,” he added.
“It’s amazing history hangs on so fine a thread. If she had got the calculations wrong, or if she hadn’t been asked to help, if the decision had not been made to go with eight guns, who knows what would have happened.”
The story has been a family secret for years and emerged when Hazel’s granddaughter, Felicity Baker, a BBC journalist, dedicated 18 months to putting the pieces together.
The Schoolgirl Who Helped To Win A War is on the BBC News Channel tomorrow at 1:30pm, 5:30pm and 8:30pm and Sunday at 10:30am or 4:30pm.