Air Chief Marshal Sir Neil Wheeler, GCB (1917-2009)

[Michael Rhodes]

Air Chief Marshal Sir Neil Wheeler, who died 9 January 2009 aged 91,
enjoyed an outstanding wartime career – at the time of his death he
was the RAF's most highly-decorated officer – and later made a notable
contribution to the British aerospace industry.

Having been a regular peacetime officer, in the early months of the
war Wheeler was instructing on outdated bombers. But in the spring of
1940 he decided he should take a more active part; and, after a highly
irregular visit to the Air Ministry, he managed to wangle a posting to
the top secret Photographic Development Unit at Heston, the brainchild
of the brilliant and unorthodox Sidney Cotton.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/4229953/Air-Chief-Marshal-Sir-Neil-Wheeler.html

In addition to his three gallantry awards, Wheeler was appointed OBE
(1949), CBE (1957), CB (1967), KCB (1969) and GCB (1975). He was
awarded the AFC in 1954.

Sir Neil Wheeler married, in 1942, Elizabeth Weightman, then a WAAF
officer serving as a photographic interpreter. She survives him with
their two sons and a daughter. His nephew General Sir Roger Wheeler
was Chief of the General Staff from 1997 to 2000.

--==--==

[Michael Rhodes]

Air Chief Marshal Sir Neil Wheeler, GCB, CBE, DSO, DFC and Bar, AFC,
wartime photo-reconnaissance and shipping-strike pilot, was born on
July 8, 1917. He died on January 9, 2009, aged 91.

At the outbreak of the Second World War Neil Wheeler found himself as
an instructor of rookie bomber pilots in 207 Squadron, an occupation
not at all to the taste of a man who was itching to get into combat
with the enemy. A permanent career officer, he had been in the RAF
since 1935.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article5606732.ece

He had grown up through what Churchill called the “locust years” of
Britain’s military unpreparedness in the face of the German threat,
and then as a young officer experienced the belated quickening pace of
rearmament, particularly in modern aircraft types. He naturally wanted
a role in the war that had now inevitably broken out. In September
1940 he agitated for a posting to the photo-reconnaissance (PR) unit
at Heston, got it and spent the next 18 months flying long-range
sorties in its PR Spitfires.

> --==--==