Pilot Officer C H Hight - a tribute: Commonwealth War Grave, Bournemouth East Cemetery (1)

Image: © Mike Searle Taken: 23 Sep 2015

† The 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain is an appropriate time to remember the only Allied airman killed in action over Bournemouth during the Battle. Pilot Officer Cecil Henry Hight was a New Zealander who in 1938 had worked his passage to England in order to join the RAF as a pilot. After completion of flying training in November 1939, he joined 234 Squadron at Leconfield, flying Blenheims, although by March 1940 the squadron had been re-equipped with Spitfires. On Thursday 15 August 1940 in the middle of the Battle of Britain, 234 Squadron Spitfires, then based at Middle Wallop in Hampshire were scrambled to intercept a large formation of German bombers and fighter escort spotted off Portland in Dorset. During the engagement P/O Hight's Spitfire, R6988 was hit over Bournemouth by machine gun fire from the rear gunner of a German bomber. Eye-witnesses reported his aircraft going down into a dive from about 5000 feet, followed by the pilot who had managed to bail out but whose parachute failed to open. The body of P/O Hight was recovered from the garden of 'Hambledon' a house in Leven Avenue; his aircraft crashed nearby at the corner of Leven Avenue and Walsford Road, barely 50 yards away. It is thought that Hight was too badly injured to pull the 'D' ring of his parachute ripcord. He was buried with full military honours in Bournemouth East Cemetery (Boscombe), on 19 August. A memorial service was held in St Peter's church, Bournemouth on 7 April 1943, and a plaque to Hight's memory who was aged just 22 when he died, was unveiled in the church by the High Commissioner for New Zealand. Mr and Mrs Hoare the owners of 'Hambledon' planted a Garden of Remembrance on the spot where Hight's body was found. Tragically, three months later Mr Hoare was killed, and his wife buried in the debris of their house when it was destroyed in another bombing raid. No trace of the house or its Garden of Remembrance remains today. After the war a housing estate road in West Howe, Bournemouth was named Pilot Hight Road in memory of the young airman, and an image of a Spitfire was added to two of the road signs in 2010 as a further tribute. In 2015, the 75th anniversary year of the Battle of Britain, and on the 75th anniversary of Hight's death, a Portland stone memorial was unveiled at Leven Avenue by Bournemouth Mayor John Adams, and local MP Conor Burns. It stands on a sward in Leven Avenue between Walsford Road and Benellen Avenue, close to the Spitfire crash site, and where P/O Hight's body was found. His grave in Bournemouth East Cemetery in Boscombe is in the area set aside for Commonwealth War Graves. Image

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