As promised here and in the following e mail is the photo of the first aircraft to land on St Vincent. It took place on a pasture on the Diamond Estate, July 29th 1932. During WW2 that pasture was transformed into the Diamond Airport and the original terminal building still stands.

Many years ago Ken Punnett lent me this photo, it was in bad shape so with his permission I sent it to a restorer in Canada. I returned the original to him and kept two copies, one large which I framed and is the subject of this e mail, and a smaller one which I scanned and is in the following mail. I would have liked to have done a good scan of the larger one but am reluctant to remove it from the frame.

If you can improve the photos so much the better but please place either on your oldies website.

Of the people posing, the policeman on the left is not known. The constable in the middle may be the father of Nina Maloney, former radio presenter. This was suggested by Col Sydney Anderson. Moving to the right, next is Major Peebles, the administrator at the time. The man in the cork hat is Arnold Punnett, owner of Diamond Estate whose house can be seen on the hill behind. There is now a school on the house site. Next is Edmund Lickfold, a Trinidadian, WW1 RFC pilot and instructor.  The next man is Micky Cipriani, owner and pilot of the aircraft. Next is an unknown police imspector.

Micky Cipriani had served in the British Army in WW1 and survived the battle of Mons. Lickfold taught him to fly and he bought and assembled the aircraft, a de  Haviland Moth in Trinidad.  They had left Trinidad that morning and took off later for Barbados where they made I believe an historic first  landing at Rockley.

Cipriani was killed in this very aircraft along with a friend on June 3, 1934, while on his way to Tobago seeking to establish an air link between Trinidad and Tobago. The bodies of Cipriani and his friend, Leslie Bradshaw, were found in the mountainous region of Brasso Seco, 11 days after the fatal crash.

While this was the first aircraft to land on St Vincent, it was not the first to touch its soil. Sometime in the 1920's, a small formation of seaplanes operated by the US Navy stopped at St Vincent en route to South America. I have seen a postcard showing the planes on the beach at Kingstown.

Duncan Richardson