The Telegraph Obituary 2001

LT-CDR ROGER HILL, who has died in New Zealand aged 90, was awarded a DSO and a DSC in the course of his exemplary service as a destroyer commander in the Second World War. 

Roger Percival Hill was born on June 22 1910 in Cuckfield. He grew up at Brighton, Sussex, and was sent for schooling at Pangbourne, before joining the Royal Navy in 1927. 

The early part of his naval career was spent mostly in big ships, on the China station, in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. His ambition, though, was to serve in destroyers, and by the Abyssinian crisis he was serving in the newly commissioned destroyer Electra. 

His war service began with seven months in a trawler, acting as a U-boat decoy. After a period as First Lieutenant of the sloop Enchantress on North Atlantic convoys, he was given command of Ledbury, escorting the Russian convoys PQ 15, PQ 16 and the ill-fated PQ 17, in which 23 out of 34 merchant ships were sunk after a disastrously ill-judged signal from the Admiralty. 

By the summer of 1942, Hill commanded the Hunt class destroyer Ledbury, which, after Russian convoy escort duty, arrived in the Straits of Gibraltar to join the escort for the Pedestal convoy. Carrying vital supplies to Malta, the convoy represented almost the last hope - short of surrender - for the embattled islanders. 

In early August, 13 merchant ships and the tanker Ohio, with an escort of aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines, set sail from Gibraltar. They were soon subjected to continual assault by enemy aircraft, U-boats and E-boats. 

At dusk, after a few days at sea, the by now depleted convoy - already without battleships, carriers or fighter aircraft cover - was subjected to a fierce attack by German Ju 88 dive-bombers and torpedo aircraft. Hill took Ledbury through the merchant ships to the head of the column to reach "a better place to shoot at these planes". 

During the attack - which continued all night - the steering gear of the tanker Ohio was badly damaged. Hill moved Ledbury alongside, apprised himself of the situation, and led Ohio back into the convoy. 

Nearing Malta, Pedestal again came under assault by Ju 88s, in what Hill described as "a mother and father of an attack". The large merchant ship Waimarama, which was carrying all her petrol in drums on the upper deck, was hit by a stick of bombs and blew up. The flames, Hill recalled, blazed hundreds of feet in the air, and the sea was on fire "as far as the eye could see". 

As Italian aircraft dropped circling torpedoes into the water, Hill took Ledbury into the inferno, where his men went over the side with ropes around them to pick up several dozen survivors. Such was the intensity of the heat that as Hill leant over the side of his ship, he held on to his beard to prevent it catching fire. 

During a further day and night at sea, under frequent bombardment, Ledbury, in concert with the destroyers Penn and Bramham, shepherded the disabled Ohio towards Malta, pushing her into position for a tug to take her into harbour - there to be greeted by bands playing and people cheering and shouting. 

Hill received the signal "Well Done" from the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and was awarded his DSO. Later, in his foreword to the book Malta Convoy, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Philip Vian wrote that Hill's "intrepidity and resource seemed to have no limit". In 1943, Hill received command of the destroyer Grenville. En route from the English Channel to the Mediterranean, Grenville engaged in a successful 24-hour U-boat hunt in the Bay of Biscay. For this, Hill was awarded his DSC.

Subsequently, during his command of Grenville, Hill took part in Operation Tunnels - night sweeps which aimed to sink enemy ships trying to reach Biscay ports. Grenville was present when the cruiser Charybdis was sunk, with great loss of life, leaving Hill as Senior Officer to deal with the aftermath and to give evidence to the court martial. 

Immediately after this, Grenville was ordered to the Mediterranean, where she was one of the supporting ships off the Anzio beachhead. Hill was then transferred to the command of the destroyer Jervis - repaired after having her bows blown off by a guided bomb - in which he had a hectic time in support of the Normandy landings in June 1944. 

By September 1944, Jervis's turbines were worn out and she paid off for a long refit in Belfast. Hill was then sent to command an Air Station, which he did not much enjoy. Then, as a passenger in an ambulance, he sustained head injuries which led eventually to his being invalided out of the Service. 

Hill found it difficult to settle down to civilian life, and in 1965, his first marriage having broken up, he and his second wife emigrated to New Zealand. Initially, he worked as a dock labourer, while writing his wartime memoirs, Destroyer Captain. 

Subsequently, he taught navigation at Nelson Technical College, farmed outside Nelson, built a house called "Jervis" and was a member of the Nelson Harbour Board. Latterly, he lived at Arrowtown, Central Otago, near one of his daughters. 

Hill's Senior Officer on PQ 17, Captain Jack Broome, wrote that "after PQ 17 [Hill] had little faith in the shore staff who directed operations at sea. He was part rebel: in another age he would have made an excellent - if humane - pirate.