On November 29, 1975, Formula 1 double-world champion Graham Hill was killed when the plane he was flying crashed while coming in to land near a North London aerodrome.
Hill, 46, and five members of his motor racing team died when the Piper Aztec aeroplane he was piloting clipped a row of trees in thick fog and crashed near Arkley golf course in Hertfordshire just before 10pm.
The plane’s occupants had been returning from a testing session at the Paul Ricard Circuit in France, and included up-and-coming driver Tony Brise and team manager Ray Brimble as well as two mechanics and a designer.
Hill, Formula 1 world champion in 1962 and 1968, had retired from the sport six months earlier in order to concentrate on developing his Embassy Hill racing team and mentoring 23-year-old Brise, a Formula 3 champion tipped to follow Hill into the pantheon of British driving greats.
[April 7, 1968: Formula One champion Jim Clark killed in Hockenheim crash]
[May 1, 1994: Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna is killed at the San Marino Grand Prix]
During his career, the popular and charismatic Hill had won the Monaco Grand Prix five times and also trumphed in the Le Mans 24 Hours and at the Indianapolis 500 to complete the ‘Triple Crown’ of motor racing.
- Bitten by the racing bug after driving a Formula 3 car at Brands Hatch but lacking a driving licence, Hill taught himself to drive in a 1934 Morris, before talking his way into a job as a mechanic at a racing school.
- Hill’s trademark pencil moustache was grown out of defiance – he hated his spell of national service with the Royal Navy and deliberately flouted naval regulations by cultivating the neatly trimmed ‘tache.
- Before taking up motor racing, Hill was a keen member of the London Rowing Club, even competing at the Henley Regatta. He adapted the club’s dark blue and white oar-shaped cap design for his motor racing helmet, an insignia later adopted by son Damon (above) and grandson Josh.
- Hill won the 1962 world title driving for BRM and the 1968 title in a Lotus. Until Lewis Hamilton won the 2014 F1 title, Hill was the only British driver to have won two championships with different teams.
- After winning the 1966 Indy 500 at the first attempt, Hill spent his share of the £55,000 prize on the Aztec twin-engine plane in which he met his death. He dubbed the plane ‘Hillarious Airways’.
- Hill held the record, since eclipsed by Ayrton Senna, for the number of wins at the prestigious Monaco Grand Prix with five victories between 1963 and 1969. Known as ‘Mr Monaco’, it was his failure to qualify for the 1975 Monaco GP that prompted his immediate retirement.
- Hill was as comfortable in the limelight as he was behind the wheel. The public warmed to the suave, moustachioed, roguish extrovert, and his verbal sparring with F1 rival Jackie Stewart won him many fans. His ready wit even made him a regular panellist on odd-word game show Call My Bluff.
- He even turned his hand to acting, appearing in the James Garner film Grand Prix, as a helicopter pilot in 1974’s Caravan to Vaccares, and in a sketch on TV’s Dick Emery Show.
- Hill’s son, Damon, followed his father into motor sport, and was crowned Formula 1 world champion in 1996. The two remain the only father and son to have won the F1 title.
