Min Larkin, historian and archivist for RAF Halton and the Halton Aircraft Apprentice Organisation is celebrating 70 years both in and out of uniform. He completed 50 years in uniform, commissioning in 1959 and went on to finish Air Engineering Officer Training at RAF Hullavington. After retiring from the RAF in July 1994 he started a new career at RAF Halton as a civil servant where he was invited to work within Senior Officer Media Training
Image by: RAF Halton Photographic Section
His achievements include, in 1995 in a voluntary capacity, he celebrated the inception of the Apprentice Museum, now the Trenchard Museum, after which he went on to initiate the stained-glass window project in St George’s Church, which now boasts over 150 Tribute windows, one being for his own 63rd Entry.
In 1997 he succeeded in raising enough money to realise his ambition to build a Halton Apprentice Tribute, unveiled by HRH The Queen, which sits outside Kermode Hall. In 2007, he ran a campaign for a memorial stone tribute to the Princess Mary RAF Halton Hospital, and succeeded in getting HRH Princess Alexandra to unveil it.
Min has a passion for cycling and on retiring from the RAF he pedalled from Land’s End to John O’Groats. As his fitness improved he cycled to the Rock Of Gibraltar, and later from the Arctic Circle to North Cape, raising funds for the Halton Apprentices’ Association and the Coastal Command Memorial project at Westminster Abbey.
Min said: “As I write this I am the historian and archivist for RAF Halton. I started the archives in 2007 and it has been an all absorbing interest and passion. So far I have collected and mostly catalogued a full history of the RAF Halton Apprentice Scheme, much of the Army and Royal Flying Corps, RFC, days at Halton and the Princess Mary RAF Halton Hospital, persuading other volunteers to join me in my office overlooking the historical Henderson mess and Henderson parade ground. There can be no better way to end ones working life.”
Min was made a Commander of The British Empire (CBE) in 1993 for his long and distinguished service to the Royal Air Force.
