Bill Wratten

Sir William John Wratten (born 15 August 1939) is a retired senior commander in the Royal Air Force who was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of RAF Strike Command from 1994 to 1997.

Flying career Educated at Chatham House Grammar School in Ramsgate, Wratten entered RAF Cranwell and was commissioned into the Royal Air Force in 1960. He was appointed Officer Commanding No. 23 Squadron in 1975 and, following his promotion to group captain, he became Station Commander at RAF Coningsby in 1980.

Chinook helicopter crash Board of Inquiry In 1995, following the Chinook Helicopter Crash on the Mull of Kintyre, Wratten was the Senior Reviewing Officer of the Board of Inquiry which had failed to find a cause of the accident. Despite a lack of Accident Data Recorder and cockpit voice recorder, Wratten concluded that because the aircraft hit the ground whilst in cloud/fog, pilot error was the cause of the crash and found the pilots guilty of gross negligence. Following a subsequent Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry and House of Commons Public Accounts Committee report, a House of Lords Select Committee was appointed to consider all the circumstances surrounding the crash and unanimously concluded "that the reviewing officers were not justified in finding that negligence on the part of the pilots caused the aircraft to crash".