Nevill Vintcent

Who was Nevill Vintcent?

Nevill Vintcent, O.B.E., D.F.C. was a South African aviator and airline founder.

He was the son of Charles Vintcent, a South African cricketer.

In 1942, Vintcent set out on a flight to India to put into effect a plan for which he had fought long and tenaciously - the establishment of an aircraft factory in India. The RAF Hudson in which he had been given a place in the crew to expedite his return disappeared without trace after taking off from a Cornish aerodrome. While officially there was no further information, it is known that other RAF aircraft were attacked by enemy aircraft in the mouth of the English Channel that day, and among his friends it was presumed that Vintcent was shot down in that vicinity.

Nevill Vintcent, a South African, born in 1902, entered Osborne in 1916, proceeded to Dartmouth, and served in HMS Temeraire for a few months during the Great War. In 1920 he went to Cranwell with the first course, was commissioned in the RAF in 1922, and served in Kurdistan, Transjordania, Egypt, and Iraq, where he won the DFC in unusual circumstances when he, with a brother officer, had made a forced landing inn hostile country. To enable his co-pilot to fire the guns of the aeroplane and beat off the attacks of Arab horsemen, he carried the tail of the aeroplane on his shoulder, and throughout a prolonged engagement swung the aircraft into position for firing until help arrived.