Old Haltonians
RAF apprentice association
The Old Haltonian Association, which was founded by Lieutenant Colonel AFS Cardwell in 1925, was an important feature of the earliest years of the Royal Air Force's apprentice training at the No. 1 School of Technical Training. The objects of the Old Haltonian Association were to stimulate interest and comradeship between all ex-Halton apprentices, to provide information on the progress and activities of ex-apprentices for those still under training and to give each aircraft apprentice at Halton an insight into the functions of service units. It was a flourishing activity with representatives on every RAF unit and in the aircraft industry who all submitted reports to the association's Halton Magazine on the doings of ex-apprentices worldwide.
RAF Aircraft Apprentice Scheme
The RAF Aircraft Apprentice Scheme was initiated by Lord Trenchard at the No. 1 School of Technical Training, which had moved to RAF Halton by 1922. Initially started in 1920 at Halton camp, the site was not ready to accept apprentices until 1922 so the first 4 Entries were trained at 'RAF Cranwell'. Between 1922 and 1993, when the scheme ended with 155th Entry, over 40,000 young men known, more or less affectionately as Halton 'Brats' had graduated. Richie Waylens (155th) is officially the last apprentice to graduate from the apprentice scheme.
Old Haltonian revival
The modern era of ex-Apprentice activity built up again during the 1970s having rather fallen away in the previous decade.
The public source identifies “Old Haltonians” as rAF apprentice association. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Haltonians, apprentice and association.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 18, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7084166. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1925, 1922, 1920 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Old Haltonians” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.