FOXLEY-NORRIS, Christopher Neil 1917-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born March 16, 1917, in Birkenhead, England; died September 28, 2003, in Northend Common, Oxfordshire, England. Military officer and author. Foxley-Norris was a noted career officer and administrator in the Royal Air Force. After receiving his master's degree from Trinity College, Oxford, in 1938, he studied law at Middle Temple for a year. While at university, he learned to pilot aircraft in the University Air Squadron, and so naturally enlisted in the RAF when World War II began. During the war, he fought in the Battle of Britain, as well as flying missions in Europe, the North Sea, and, for a time, serving as a flight instructor in Canada. After the war, he commanded the Oxford University Air Squadron and was put in charge of air planning in Singapore, Malaysia. This was followed with an assignment in Burma on Earl Mountbatten's Defense Staff, before he returned to Singapore in 1964 to lead the small air force there. In the late-1960s, Foxley-Norris was commander-in-chief of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Second Tactical Air Force in Germany, and in 1971 he was promoted to air chief marshal to become chief of personnel and logistics for the Defense Council. Four years after retiring from the military in 1974, Foxley-Norris published his autobiography, A Lighter Shade of Blue. In his later years, he served as chair of the Trinity College Oxford Society from 1984 to 1986, and of the Ex-RAF and Dependents Severely Disabled Holiday Trust; he was also president of the Leonard Cheshire Housing Association. Foxley-Norris's other published work is The Royal Air Force at War (1983), which he edited.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Independent (London, England), September 30, 2003, p. 18.

Times (London, England), September 29, 2003.