Orders, Decorations and Medals

A rare and important world record distance flight medal awarded to Flight Sergeant T. D. Dixon, Royal Air Force, for his part in the R.A.F’s Long Range Development Unit’s flight from Ismailia to Darwin in November 1938, a feat accomplished over two days in Vickers Wellesley aircraft and a record that stood until after the 1939-45 War

Federation Aeronautique Internationale, Prix Henry De Lavaulx, silver, by Grun, 52mm. by 73mm., obverse, bust and title of Comte H. de Lavaulx, reverse, an eagle over a seaplane with award title below and officially inscribed, ‘1938, Ft. Sgt. T. D. Dixon, Record du Monde de Distance en Ligne Droite 10,715.448 Km.’, minor contact marks and light surface scratch to reverse, good very fine and better £600-800

Thomas David Dixon served as Wireless Operator in the aircraft flown by Flight Lieutenant H. A. V. “Harry” Hogan and, in common with the other crew member, Flight Lieutenant R. G. Musson, was a qualified pilot - accordingly, at certain intervals in the flight, he took to the helm. The other two participating aircraft, also Vickers Wellesleys of the R.A.F’s Long Range Development Unit, were captained by Flight Lieutenant A. N. Combe and Squadron Leader R. Kellett.

Their epic flight, undertaken in early November 1938, took the three aircraft over the Persian Gulf, India and Singapore until, in Dixon’s case, a forced landing had to be made by Hogan at Koepang in Timor as a result of shortage of fuel. Earlier, as confirmed by their aircraft’s flight log, weather conditions had been bordering on the perilous:

‘On reaching the coast of Borneo it was difficult to pick up the coast line - the sea and land looked similar. The time was 1430 hours when we started entering tremendous cumulous thunder clouds which seemed to lie between 5,000 feet and 25,000 feet. There were flashes of lightning on all sides and violent bumps. Turns were made to Port and Starboard up to 90 degrees to avoid going straight into the lightning. Every effort was made to give the lightning the widest safe berth and yet maintain our direct track. As we proceeded across Borneo the weather became worse. We saw some mountains below us at one time and then for almost two hours we saw neither the ground nor the moon and flew in continuous heavy rain. We decided to climb, in the hope of getting above the main nimbus cloud layer, and we climbed to 14,000 feet, at which height the air temperature was down to 1 C. and, as it was still pouring, we went no higher. The hood leaked. Navigation had been almost entirely by dead reckoning and the conditions for using wireless extremely difficult ... ’

A special feature run by The Aeroplane in November 1938 states:

‘Presumably Flight Lieutenant Hogan and his crew get this record because they landed in Koepang while the other two aircraft were still in the air, and so ended their journey and taking the record before the others landed ...

No praise can be too high for the nine young men who undertook the journey. To sit for two days and nights cramped in an aeroplane flying for much of the time over open sea, calls for a large supply of that three o’clock in the morning courage which Napoleon Bonaparte admired so much.

Setting out on a bombing raid against a country whose inhabitants one dislikes, knowing that one may be shot down on the way, calls for fighting courage, but there is a definite objective in it which is the safety and honour of one’s country. But a peacetime venture of this kind, from which many other people derive a much greater advantage than do the heroes of the affair themselves, is a very different business.

Whether we as a nation, or the R.A.F. as a service, is justified in asking nine picked young men to risk their lives hanging onto a single airscrew and aero-motor can at any rate be argued. Everybody knows that Pegasus motors with Rotol airscrews will, bar accidents, run for many times 50 hours non-stop, and nobody expects that a geodetic Wellesley will be shaken to pieces in such a time by such a smooth-running engine motor.

And yet the best of motors do stop sometimes. And when an aeroplane only has one of them the risk to us seems to be unjustifiable. Three naval vessels were stationed along the course, one in the Arabian Sea, one in the Bay of Bengal and one in the Timor Sea. But the Timor Sea is 500 miles wide and the Bay of Bengal is a lot more and so is the Arabian Sea. And no aeroplane has a gliding angle which from a height of 10,000 feet or so will carry it 250 miles, whereas any twin-motored aeroplane ought to be able to travel that distance if one motor stops.

We hope at a later date to have a good deal more to say on records, in the hope that they may become more useful and more sensible. For the present, the rules of records being what they are, British pilots, British aeroplanes and British motors have done well.

This triple beating of the Long Distance Record - for the machine that landed in Koepang covered 6,600 miles - is eminently satisfactory, coming as it does just before the Paris Aero Show, so that it will help to recover the prestige of the British Aircraft Industry.’

As it transpired, Dixon and his crew, having reached Darwin, were compelled to make another forced landing, on this occasion in the Australian outback at Rotol Reach, on 16 December 1938, and it was not until the 24th, after an adventurous trek, that they made the nearest settlement at Walcott - Dixon having suffered severe burns to a foot in the interim.

Sadly he was killed in a flying accident on 16 January 1940, while serving as an instructor in the U.K. The son of Henry and Florence Dixon, he was buried in the East London Cemetery, Plaistow. Of his fellow crew, Rowland Musson died on active service as a Wing Commander in No. 172 Squadron, and his senior pilot, Harry Hogan, rose to the rank of Air Vice-Marshal after winning a D.F.C. as C.O. of No. 501 Squadron in the Battle of Britain. Interestingly, another veteran of this world record distance flight, Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burnett, died earlier this year, aged 98 years.

Sold with a fine array of original photographs (25 images), several directly related to the World Record Flight and including the recipient, together with old copies of the relevant flight log of his aircraft, and an account of his crew’s journey, on foot, after their forced landing in the Australian outback; a reprinted cover feature from The Aeroplane, dated 9 November 1938, and photographic certificate for his Federation Aeronautique Internationale award, in its original forwarding envelope.