Henrietta Nicholson clearly remembers the childhood she spent in India. Even at the age of 80, she vividly remembers walking in a cool breeze on Juhu beach, enjoying a hot cup of coffee at Willingdon Club, and splashing around in the Breach Candy swimming pool. But whenever she thinks about her father, her mind takes her to the picture of an accident, of her father trying to escape from a broken lift. She was only five at that time, and she could see her father only from his waist upwards, trapped in a lift. Even today she has not forgotten her fathers face as he was waiting for someone to pull him out.
Nicholson does not know why that image is etched in her mind. The 80-year-old daughter of Nevill Vintcent is remembering her father, a co-founder of Air India and a retired Royal Air Force pilot.
Nicholson’s memories about her father are not that vivid, because she was only six years old when he vanished after his plane crashed on the return flight from England to India. Two years after that incident, she said goodbye to Mumbai and flew to England along with her mother, Pamela. Thus, Nicholson’s connection to the great city where she was born and brought up ended. When she returns to that city and enjoys the view, wearing a dark blue frock, glass bangles, beaded earrings, a pair of slippers and a hat, she thinks that after seven decades she has returned to her childhood, which she left there halfway.

Extraordinary courage and foresight are the words that come up first in mind when she thinks about her father. He was tall and well-built. Showing black-and-white photo of her father, Nicholson said, “My father was always busy. We used to get only very little time with him.” It was through many such photographs that Pamela told the story of Vintcent to Nicholson and her siblings.
What pulled Vintcent to a busy life was his desire to fly. He always dreamt of wings. At the age of 20, he joined the Royal Air Force and served in the Middle East during the first World War. When she talks about the honours bestowed upon him by the British government — the distinguished flying cross, the distinguished service order, and the officer of the most excellent order of the British empire — Nicholson’s eyes glow with pride.
She remembers a war story told by her mother. Once, he had to crash-land his aircraft in the Arabian desert. The place was unfamiliar, and as soon as the aircraft landed, the local tribespeople came on horses and began to attack her father and his team. The aircraft had a machine gun at the front of the fuselage. Her father jumped out of the aircraft, lifted the tail of the aircraft on his shoulders turned the plane in circles. This move helped the co-pilot to easily fire at the tribespeople and scare them away.
In the biography of J.R.D. Tata, Beyond the Last Blue Mountain, R.M. Lala has written in detail about this adventure. He was someone who used to courageously embark on adventures in any circumstance without fearing for his safety. There were many more examples of Vintcent’s extraordinary courage. In Lala’s words, he was a well-built man with golden locks and smiling dark blue eyes. He was a boxing champion in the Royal Air Force. He left RAF for more thrilling opportunities.
In Aircraft and Engine Perfect, a book on Tata by Murad Fyzee, Pamela says that Vintcent saw an advertisement for a seaplane pilot and went for it without any experience of flying that aircraft. But, he learned to fly it soon by crouching behind another pilot. He was that enthusiastic.
Without much delay, Vintcent began to fly aircraft alone, from Borneo to the Straits Settlements. It was at the end of 1920s that he flew a deHavilland DH.9 aircraft from England to India with captain J.S. Newall. It was one of the longest flights of those days. While he spent the next two years on holidays, aerial photography and surveys, he understood one thing: there was scope for commercial aviation in the country.
He came to know that Imperial Airways was planning to start a service from Karachi to Kolkata. Still, it was certain that half of the airspace of the Indian subcontinent will be left out by aircraft. So, even before Imperial started its service, Vintcent put forward the idea of a plane service from Karachi to Mumbai and to south India and Colombo.
J.R.D. was not the first person whom he considered to include in this venture. He decided to approach Tata after discussions with many prominent people, including Russa Mehta, son of textile magnate, Sir Homi Mehta, failed. Four weeks before that, Tata had got his pilot licence. After long deliberations, differences and disputes, it was in 1932 that Tata Airlines got ready for its maiden flight with two Puss Moth aircrafts. Vintcent was the chief pilot and manager. He was assisted by Homi Bharucha. Thus the first aircraft took off from Karachi with letters. Tata flew the aircraft till Mumbai, and, from there, Vintcent took it to Chennai via Bellary.
It was one year before this venture that Vintcent met Pamela. “Mum and her friends in the United States were travelling to India by ship. Dad was busy organising something official.” What Nicholson knows about her parents’ love story is what she has heard from her mother’s friends. They married in England and came directly to Mumbai. By then, Tata Airlines had started making profit. Bakhtiar Dadabhoy says this in his book, Jeh: A Life of J.R.D. Tata. In eight years, the company covered lakhs of miles, and it was able to take people from Mumbai to Delhi comfortably for the price of a first class rail ticket.
Then war broke out. Like elsewhere in the world, in India too airline services almost came to a standstill. But the farsighted Vintcent did not sit idle. He realised that war had created a situation that was conducive to build an aircraft factory in India. But, for some reason, that project did not succeed first. After regular discussions with the British minister of aircraft production, Lord Beaverbrook, he secured a licence to build an aircraft factory in Pune for war purposes. He took off to India in RAF’s Hudson aircraft on January 29, 1942, with the contract to start the factory. But, soon after it took off, the aircraft disappeared, without leaving any trace of Vintcent.
“Mum was not willing to believe that dad was killed. Her belief was that he was in detention in some country, and he would return one day. But, even two years after the incident, there was no news of him,” says Nicholson.
On the day Vintcent disappeared, another RAF aircraft had come under attack. Investigators finally reached the conclusion that someone must have shot down the plane in which he was travelling near France. After that, Pamela returned to England with her three children. They lived with Pamela’s sister, Celia Johnson, a British actor. The only remaining link to India was their closeness to the Tata family of “J uncle and Thelma aunty.”
Vintcent’s death shattered J too. Dadabhoy writes that a visit to his office will reveal his close bond with Vintcent. He used to keep a photo of Vintcent alongside a photo of his father. In a few years after that tragedy, Tata Airlines became a public company and adopted the name Air India. Rest is history.
As Pamela prepared for a second marriage, the memories of Vintcent and remembrances vanished from even that house. But after decades, Vintcent got a successor in Nicholson’s son, Henry, a glider pilot.
“Unlike my other two children, my Henry used to dream about the sky like his grandfather. Once he even took me alone on a flight. But, by the time he began to grow wings, he lost both sky and earth. Leaving all dreams aside, he left us in a skiing accident.” Nicholson’s eyes were turning moist.