After a period as a staff officer at HQ Fighter Command he took c
ommand of No 208 Squadron in May 1953. Based at Abu Sueir in Egypt, the squadron flew Meteor jets in the fighter/reconnaissance role. At the end of his tour in the summer of 1956 he was awarded the AFC.
In 1959 he went
to the British Embassy in Washington where he spent three years. He retired from the RAF in 1964 having added the Air Efficiency Award to his other decorations.
He returned to the US to lead a British consultancy firm in Boston for three years before settling in Norfolk where he became a director in the shoe industry and secretary of his local chamber of commerce. He retired in the early 1980s.
Neil wrote extensively about his wartime experiences. Sir John Grandy, described his book Gun Button to Fire as “the best book on the Battle of Britain”. In later years he was in great demand to attend functions and was a devoted member of the Battle of Britain Memorial Trust. He regularly attended the annual Battle of Britain service hel
d at Westminster Abbey. To mark the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain in 2015, he once again flew in a Spitfire, an
aircraft he described as “like flying a Bugatti”.
The memory of the young men who had been his colleagues was never far from his mind. “Great too were the sacrifices made by my long dead colleagues and friends,” he wrote. “Only they enjoy the blessing of eternal youth.”
Tom Neil married, in June 1945, Flight Officer Eileen Hampton. She died in 2013, and he is survived by their three sons.
Wing Commander Tom Neil, born July 14 1920, died July 11 2018.
