Eric Hill

Eric Hill (9 July 1923 – 27 July 2010) was an English first-class cricketer who played for Somerset County Cricket Club as an opening batsman between 1947 and 1951, later serving as captain of the second team, a long-serving committeeman for the county, and as a journalist covering cricket for the local newspaper, the Somerset County Gazette, and correspondent for The Daily Telegraph. In the Second World War, he was a navigator on reconnaissance missions for the Royal Air Force, and was decorated for his courage. Background Hill was born at Taunton, where his parents ran a sweetshop. He was educated at Taunton School, where he was a day boy, and where one of his contemporaries, though a boarder, was the future cricket writer Alan Gibson. In a profile of Hill written in 1983, Gibson wrote: "Although we were much of an age, he was about twice my size." Hill played soccer and cricket for the school: "[He] had a passion for cricket, a quiet but deep passion, and his ambition was to play for Somerset," Gibson wrote. War service Hill volunteered to join the RAF in 1941, and trained as a navigator. He joined No. 544 Squadron in March 1944, and flew 53 sorties in a de Havilland Mosquito with Frank Dodd, many involving long-range photo reconnaissance in the Arctic seas north and east of Scotland, and later over Germany and the Baltic Sea, and also flying diplomatic mail to Winston Churchill at conferences in Moscow, Athens and Yalta. They flew a mission to the Lofoten Islands on 9 July 1944, searching the coastal shipping lanes and photographing the mainland town of Bodø. Bad weather in northern Scotland on their return prevented a landing, and they finally landed at RAF Leuchars with just 10 gallons left in the fuel tanks. On 12 July, they again flew, via a refuelling stop at RAF Sumburgh in the Shetland Islands, to the Lofoten Islands, and then on to Altenfjord, to search for German surface vessels, flying 750 miles to the Norwegian coast above thick cloud. The top cover of their aeroplane blew off as they descended towards the fjord to make their photography run, subjecting the crew to freezing temperatures for the remainder of the flight. They made a photographic run over the targets they found, including the Tirpitz. They lost their codebooks through the open hatch, so were unable to obtain radio assistance on the way back.