Frederick F. Minchin
<templatestyles src="Module:Message box/ambox.css"></templatestyles>
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (March 2016) |
Template:Infobox military person Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick Frank Reilly Minchin Template:Post-nominals (16 June 1890 – disappeared 31 August 1927) was a British pilot of the Royal Air Force. He was declared dead in absentia after his aircraft disappeared in 1927 while attempting to cross the Atlantic.
Biography[edit | edit source]
Minchin was educated at Eastbourne College. He passed out of Sandhurst in 1909 and after two years resigned his commission to train as a civilian pilot at the recently formed Eastbourne Aviation Company. In 1913 he obtained his Royal Aero Club certificate flying a Bristol Boxkite at the Langney Aerodrome Eastbourne. In 1915 he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) with the rank of lieutenant and in 1916 was awarded the Military Cross for his daring night bombing flights into enemy territory over Egypt and Palestine. He received the Distinguished Service Order in 1918 for his outstanding leadership in directing raids against Bulgarian and Austro-Hungarian armies.[1]
In 1918, the RFC and the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) were merged into the Royal Air Force. In July 1919 he served in India and was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) having gained three awards for gallantry and mentioned in dispatches on three occasions.
In 1923, Minchin joined one of the first British commercial airlines, Instone Air Line, operating from Croydon Aerodrome near London.
Disappearance[edit | edit source]
On 31 August 1927, Lieutenant-Colonel Minchin, Captain Leslie Hamilton and Princess Anne of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg took off from Upavon airfield in a Dutch Fokker F.VIIA named the St. Raphael in a bid to become the first aviators to cross the Atlantic from east to west.
The St. Raphael was last sighted some 800 miles (1,300 km) west of Galway heading for Newfoundland. The St Raphael was never seen again, and the fate of Lieutenant Colonel Minchin, Captain Leslie Hamilton and Princess Loewenstein-Wertheim remains a mystery.
See also[edit | edit source]
References[edit | edit source]
- Articles with short description
- Use dmy dates from June 2022
- Articles with invalid date parameter in template
- Articles needing additional references from March 2016
- All articles needing additional references
- 1890 births
- 1920s missing person cases
- 1927 deaths
- British aviation pioneers
- Aviators killed in aviation accidents or incidents
- Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
- Commercial aviators
- Companions of the Distinguished Service Order
- English aviators
- Graduates of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst
- Missing aviators
- People declared dead in absentia
- People lost at sea
- Royal Air Force officers
- Royal Flying Corps officers
- Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in international waters
- Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1927
- Pages containing London Gazette template with parameter supp set to y