Deadly not dashing

SIR: Your contributor Roger Ley may have been impressed by Graham Hill landing at a closed, unlit Elstree airfield in the dark with inoperative navigation lights, but I can assure him that no professional airman would have been (I Once Met, September issue). Hill’s remark ‘I thought I’d have a stab at it,’ sums up his cavalier attitude to flying which ended predictably when he crashed during another ill-advised ‘stab’ at landing, also at Elstree in very poor weather in November 1975.

On that occasion he was carrying five members of his support team, all of whom died. Not only were these men’s families deprived of their loved ones, but Hill had neglected to renew his pilot’s licence, so invalidating his insurance. The families were thus forced to sue Hill’s estate for compensation, but due to his profligate lifestyle there was little money there, so they were all reduced to severe financial hardship, as was Hill’s own family.

Alan Mcloughlin, Cornwall.