Geoffrey T. R. Hill
Professor Geoffrey Terence Roland Hill MC, M.Sc, M.I.Mech.E., FRAeS (1895–1955), was a British aviator and aeronautical engineer.He was a pilot with No. 29 Squadron RFC and later a test pilot during the First World War as was his brother Roderic. Both working with Handley Page.He designed a series of tailless aircraft, the Westland-Hill Pterodactyls, from the 1920s onwards. After the last Pterodactyl flew in 1932, he ended his association with Westland Aircraft in order to take up a chair as Professor of Engineering Science at London University.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.He 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.