How A Teenage Girl Helped Win The Battle Of Britain | The Inspiring Story Of Hazel Hill

it's summer 1940 the height of the battle of britain after being jumped by german fighter you've somehow managed to out turn him and get on his six your thumb moves the firing button and you press it down hard seeing your bullets land on the enemy fuselage you expect it to catch fire or begin to smoke nothing happens because your fighter is only armed with four measly machine guns this is what nearly happened but luckily six years earlier a 13 year old girl managed to complete a very important homework assignment this is how hazel hill helped to win the battle of britain now if you're a student of the res fight against the luftwaffe in 1940 you know that the super marine spitfire and my personal favorite the hawker hurricane were armed with 8.303 browning machine guns if you spend any time flying the latest combat flight simulators you know that even eight 303s don't do a great deal of damage to heavily armed german fighters in fact some variants of the hurricane even had an additional 4 machine guns fitted to up its firepower imagine trying to down enemy bombers and fighters with just point three threes or four god forbid two well that so nearly happened if we go back to 1934 britain and the rest of the world were just waking up to the threat coming out of germany the previous year adolf hitler had been appointed chancellor after his party had won several electoral votes yes one despite the overall policy of appeasement which would develop up until the invasion of poland in 1939 the british air ministry began to slowly wake up when britain's government wanted to upgrade its air force it would issue a specification through the air ministry then the various aircraft companies would scramble to design a new plane to meet him best ones would win and perhaps get a contract to produce the aircraft it was extremely rare for an aircraft company to come up with their own design and then push it onto the air ministry but it did happen and that's part of our story later in 1934 the frontline fighter in the raf was the hawk of fury 2 which carried just two machine guns and had a top speed of 223 miles per hour at fifteen thousand feet not too good basically very little had changed in the two decades since the first world war had ended that very same year the bayerische flugzo work or bavarian aircraft company to us with a terrible accent designed an aircraft known to the world as the 109 the first prototype flew in october 1935 ironically powered by a british rolls-royce engine the production bf-109b was armed with four 7.92 millimeter machine guns which would have decimated a hulka fury later variants even boasted a cannon firing through the nose which was even more devastating clearly the germans had got something right the same year that the bf-109 was designed the air ministry in answer 2 specification f7-30 accepted the prototype from the gloucester company the aircraft we all know as a glostic gladiator it would go into production in 1935 armed with four 303 machine guns two of which were synchronized through the notes the bioplane was essentially britain's best answer to the new german fighter but all of that was going to change if you're enjoying the video so far and you think it's story worth spreading please give the video a like because it really does help based on the calculations done by a father and his young daughter the air ministry would come to understand that modern fighters would need no fewer than 8.3 machine guns to get the job done in 1931 sir hugh dowding started the ball rolling by asking for a report on the accuracy that could be achieved by the fastest fighters of the time over three years air trials generated a huge amount of data someone had to go through and compile all of this and reach some sort of conclusion that person would be captain frederick william hill often working at his kitchen table late into the night with a primitive calculating machine hill began to see a worrying picture the two machine guns of contemporary furies would fall far sure of what was needed and so would the armament of the gladiator the aim was to get as much lead onto a target in as short a time as possible with ever increasing closing speeds and the notion forces it turned out that dogfighting was outdated fighters would only get one pass to down the enemy it was also becoming clear to some that a new conflict was fast approaching suddenly hill was under pressure to finish his work and make sure that the next specification given by the air ministry could rapidly push the right type of fighter into production and so hill engaged the help of his 13 year old daughter who so the story goes stayed up with her father and helped calculate britain's only defense against invasion six years later hazel's son robin would say he thought his mother enjoyed maths because she was partially dyslexic and had trouble with spelling this led to some teachers thinking she was being naughty as she was obviously intelligent i think when she did mathematics she had none of these problems which is why it appealed to her so much robin said now i can relate to that because i'm also dyslexic but unfortunately i'm pretty bad at mathematics too and hazel hill did genuinely help her father who probably would not have been able to finish his work in time for an important meeting in july 1934. at the time a new specification was being developed which hypothesized that a new fighter would need four guns that fired 1200 bullets a minute this was thought to be enough hazel's father was not so sure after the calculations they realized that 256 bullets would be required in a two second burst to bring down an enemy bomber at the increased speeds of the new aircraft 4.3 machine guns such as the brownings used in later hurricanes and spitfires with a rate of fire of just 1150 rounds per minute would only give you 150 bullets on target from four guns the new fighters would need double that when captain hill handed his report to his boss the assistant director of armament research and development claude hilton keith he acknowledged the vital help his daughter had given him something keith would mention in his own memoirs armed with the new findings keith was able to discuss the matter with air commander tedder and the need for an 8-gun fighter was slowly accepted the very next air ministry specification f5 3-4 reflected the need for a replacement the hawk of fury which could also boast 8.3 machine guns this was directly what led to the development of the hawker hurricane the superman spitfire which was personally pushed by the company also followed the same basic specification without which britain would not have survived the battle of britain hazel hill would go on to join the royal army medical corps after graduating from university in london in 1943 in later life she became a gp and married one of the soldiers she helped heal during the war her story is little known because it was classified for so many years and was only revealed long after the war even her own family knew very little about her role in helping the allies win the war so if you've made it this far and you've enjoyed the video then please give it a like and if you'd like to watch another one of my videos i can recommend this one right here

Channel: Caliban Rising - Aviation History

Views: 374,732

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Id: TQForgOf1Po

Length: 8min 11sec (491 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 25 2022