Nevill Vintcent

Nevill Vintcent, O.B.E., D.F.C. (1902–1942) was a South African aviator and airline founder. He was the son of Charles Vintcent, a South African cricketer.

Nevill Vintcent, a South African, born in 1902, entered Osborne in 1916, proceeded to Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, and served in HMS Temeraire for a few months during the Great War. In 1920 he went to the Royal Air Force College 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.

For a time he served as a pilot at the RAF Aeroplane & Armament Experimental Establishment (A&AEE) at Martlesham Heath. Convinced of the great future of civil aviation, he left the RAF in 1926 and engaged in air survey work in India, Burma, the Federated Malay States and Borneo, and he flew the first air mail from Borneo to the Straits Settlements.

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