September 19 2001
Brilliant flyer who also had a flair for logistics: Fraser as a young officer in Quetta, India, 1932.

A pilot who was also an engineer, Pat Fraser did much important test flying for the RAF. At the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, in the 1930s he flew most of the myriad of types of aircraft that were being evaluated as the Air Force made the transition from fabric-covered biplanes to the fighter types which were introduced just in time to defeat the Luftwaffe in the summer of 1940.

Returning to Farnborough in 1941, he commanded the Experimental Flying Section, whose work included the testing of captured enemy aircraft. His third stint as a test pilot was in a second period of transition for the RAF: as Commandant of the Aircraft and Armament Experimental Establishment at Boscombe Down from 1945 he oversaw a flying programme that ushered in the service´s jet age.

The parts of Fraser´s career he most enjoyed were those in which he was able to get airborne. But he was also a brilliant organiser, which made him invaluable in a number of important staff and advisory posts both during and after the war. Always though, he was happiest when he returned to the cockpit, flying himself on tours of inspection as a senior officer well after his operational flying days were past.

Henry Paterson Fraser (universally known as Pat) was born in 1907 in Johannesburg, and went to school at St Andrews College, Grahamstown, after which he came to Britain to read for the Mechanical Sciences Tripos at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he began flying with the University Air Squadron and joined the Reserve of Air Force Officers. He was given a permanent commission in 1929.

His first posting was to a squadron on the troubled North-West Frontier of India, where he produced the RAF´s first manual of supply dropping, invaluable in such terrain. Returning to Britain, he did a year´s course at the RAF Engineering College.

In 1934 he joined the Aerodynamic Flight at Farnborough, where he spent the next four years. It was a time of rapid evolution in RAF thinking, especially about fighters, with aircraft not radically different from those which had fought the air battles over the Western Front from 1915 to 1918 being swiftly superseded by the Spitfire and the Hurricane. The work at Farnborough involved flying every aircraft to the limits and testing the effects on the leading edges of wings of collisions with barrage balloon cables. It was, it goes without saying, extremely hazardous.

Fraser was awarded the Air Force Cross in 1937 for his contribution to RAE´s programme. He was also awarded the Taylor Gold Medal of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1939 for a paper entitled High Wing Loading and Some of its Problems from the Pilot´s Point of View.

In the early years of the war he was at the Directorate of War Organisation at the Air Ministry, where he produced a completely revised edition of the RAF manual of war organisation.

By 1941 he was back at the RAE, where a colossal amount of evaluation flying was taking place in enemy aircraft which had either been captured intact or crashlanded. In those days it was said that the Experimental Flying Section virtually established its own Luftwaffe, and mock aerial dogfights between the latest captured aircraft and the RAF´s fighters became a common sight in the skies over Farnham Common.

During this stint at the RAE Fraser worked out a system by which the establishment´s capacity to meet its workload could be accurately measured ‹ effectively the introduction of statistical control.

In 1942 Fraser became a member of the RAF Element Combined Chiefs of Staff, Washington, a post which involved the organisation of the supply of the vast amounts of American aircraft and equipment for the RAF.

After a spell in war organisation at the Air Ministry, he was sent in 1942 to the task which was to occupy him until the end of the war, first the planning, then the operational organisation of the 2nd Tactical Air Force, the British component of the Allied Expeditionary Air Force which supported the troops on the ground throughout the North West Europe campaign. He also helped the Army by devising a graphical method for timing supporting fire with the landing of the successive waves of troops.

Fraser went to France shortly after D-Day to set up airfields for 2nd TAF in the wake of the advancing armies. For this work, in which he displayed great flair, he was appointed CBE in 1945.

After the war he returned to test flying, converting to jets on the Gloster Meteor as part of the evaluation of successive marks of the aircraft. Thereafter, his appointments included Senior Air Staff Officer Fighter Command, 1952-53; Chief of Staff Allied Air Forces Central Europe, 1954-56; and AOC No 12 Group, Fighter Command, 1956-58. One of the pleasures of this last appointment was flying himself round the scattered squadrons of his command.

In 1959 he was appointed UK permanent military representative to the Central Treaty Organisation (Cento), which had been formed that year by the UK, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey with a view to strengthening security along the Soviet Union´s southern flank.

During this time he was asked by the other alliance partners to express to the Ministry of Defence their concern that no nuclear capability had been provided for Cento, as had been promised by Britain. The result was the construction of nuclear facilities in Cyprus and the dispatch of two Vulcan squadrons to the island to replace the Canberra strike wing based there. Cento was disbanded in 1979.

Fraser, who was appointed KBE in 1961, retired as Inspector-General of the RAF in 1964. While flying over the Isle of Man in 1956 he had been struck by its tranquil appearance and determined to settle there. Though he should have been termed, in island parlance, a ³comeover², he soon became accepted by local people, throwing himself into a range of activities from helping to save the Manx Steam Railway to supporting art groups, choirs and the Gaiety Theatre.

Before retiring from the RAF he had done two ³civvy street² rehabilitation courses, one on computers, the other on concrete technology. Using the second to good effect, for the first 15 years in retirement he worked as a consultant on quality control to a Manx concrete firm.

In 1977 he became ordained as a minister. Though he had no parish himself, he was happy to operate as a roving pastor, serving effectively as number two in, successively, the parishes of Maughold and Ramsey.

Paterson Fraser is survived by his wife Avis, whom he married in 1933, and by their two sons.

Air Marshal the Rev Sir Paterson Fraser, KBE, CB, AFC, Inspector-General RAF, 1962-64, was born on July 15, 1907. He died on August 4, 2001, aged 94.