Richard Larn

Richard James Vincent Larn, OBE (born 1931) is a retired Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy, a businessman and maritime history writer who is widely regarded as one of Britain's leading historic shipwreck experts.

Born in Norfolk and raised in Great Yarmouth before being evacuated to Oxford during the Second World War, he went to a sea training school (TS. Mercury, Hamble) at the age of 14. Larn taught himself to dive in 1947, using a German-made Dräger U-boat escape set in the River Thames. He then joined the Merchant Navy where he served his apprenticeship as a deck-officer with the South American Saint Line and eventually became 2nd Mate. In 1950 he transferred to the Royal Navy where he stayed for 22 years. As a Chief Petty Officer Mechanician/diver he served in Korea and initiated diving from Dragonfly helicopters to recover ram-jet un-manned gunnery target drone aircraft off Malta, being dropped into the sea wearing diving equipment with Petty Officer John Guppy, up to five miles offshore, to assist a rescue tug in recovering the targets intact. They were possibly the first divers in the Royal Navy to operate using diving apparatus from helicopters, long before SAR divers. He also participated in diving expeditions all over the world. Larn then specialised in air-launched weapons, Firestreak, Redtop, Sidewinder, Bullpup, Mk.43 and 44 homing torpedoes, and the 2000lb HEMC nuclear bomb, and was Chief Petty Officer i/c the Guided Weapons Section on board HMS Hermes for three years, which required Positive Security Vetting to Top Secret - Atomic.

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