Education
Minchin and was educated at Eastbourne College.
Minchin and was educated at Eastbourne College.
He was declared dead in absentia after his aircraft disappeared in 1927 while attempting to cross the Atlantic. 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 Aeronautical Club certificate flying a Bristol Boxkite at the Langney Aerodrome Eastbourne.
In 1915 he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps (Reconstruction Finance Corporation) 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.
In 1918, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the Royal Naval Air Service (Royal Naval Air Service) 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 (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) 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 Lincolnshire, operating from Croydon Aerodrome near London. 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 Saint Raphael in a bid to become the first aviators to cross the Atlantic from east to west.
The Saint Raphael was last sighted some 800 miles west of Galway heading for Newfoundland.
The Street Raphael was never seen again, and the fate of Lieutenant Colonel Minchin, Captain Leslie Hamilton and Princess Loewenstein-Wertheim remains a mystery.