MINIATURE MEDALS 1280
The mounted group of eleven miniature dress medals attributed to Captain R. F. L. Dickey, Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force
DISTINGUISHED SERVICE CROSS, G.V.R., with Second and Third Award Bars; 1914 STAR; BRITISHWAR AND VICTORYMEDALS, with M. I.D. oak leaves; GENERAL SERVICE 1918-62, 1 clasp, Iraq; 1939-45 STAR; ATLANTIC STAR; AFRICA STAR; DEFENCE AND WAR MEDALS 1939-45; France, Republic, CROIX DE GUERRE 1939-1940, with bronze palm on riband, mounted court style as worn, generally good very fine (11)
£300-400
Provenance: Sotheby’s, March 1988 (when sold alongside the full sized awards) Dix Noonan Webb, July 2003; December 2006; and November 2015.
The Recipient’s full sized awards were sold in these rooms on 12 December 2012. D.S.C. London Gazette 20 July 1917. Second Award Bar to D.S.C. London Gazette 11 August 1917. Third Award Bar to D.S.C. London Gazette 30 November 1917. ‘For service in action with enemy submarines.’ M.I.D. London Gazettes 11 August 1917 and 19 December 1917. ‘For services in action with enemy submarines.’
Robert Frederick Lea Dickey was born in July 1895, the son of Professor Dickie of M’Crea Magee College, Londonderry, and was educated at Foyle College, where he excelled on the river and was afterwards ‘the brilliant cox of the famous Londonderry Eight who won the King’s Cup at the Cork Regatta in 1912’.
Enlisting in the Royal Naval Air Service in April 1915, he quickly gained appointment as a Petty Officer Mechanic, no doubt on account of his time at Foyle, where ‘his interest was always in things scientific and mechanical and he spent much of his spare time in experimenting’ (a letter of recommendation refers).
Selected for pilot training in the summer of 1916, Dickey was appointed to the probationary rank of Flight Sub. Lieutenant and took his aviator’s certificate (No. 3950) at R.N.A.S. Chingford in December 1916.
Posted to R.N.A.S. Felixstowe in early 1917, hub of the famous “Spider’s Web”, he teamed up as a second pilot to the Canadian Flight Sub. Lieutenant B. D. “Billiken” Hobbs in Curtiss H12 flying boats (a.k.a. large American Seaplanes) and commenced his operational tour with a number of anti-submarine patrols that May.
The destruction of Zeppelin L. 43
However, as it transpired, his first successful encounter was in an air-to-air combat fought south-west of Terschilling on 14 June - a spectacular encounter for which he was given full credit as a result of his work on Lewis gun in the front cockpit. W. G. Carr’s Good Hunting takes up the story:
‘Here course was altered, and at half-past seven they were off the Island of Ameland. Now, sweeping in a 20-mile circle, they headed back down the coast homeward bound. The mist was lifting in patches. At half-past eight they were off Vlieland again. Dickey suddenly saw a Zeppelin. It was five miles on the starboard beam, at a height of only 1500 feet. “Billiken” [Hobbs] swung the bow of ‘77 towards the airship. He opened out his engines. He climbed straight for the Zeppelin. Dickey was at the bow gun, the wireless operator was at the midships gun, and the engineer was at the sternguns. The Zeppelin was barely moving. Her propellers were merely ticking over. They were now at 2000 feet, 1000 yards away from the airship and above her. The look-out on the Zeppelin saw the flying-boat. The propellers vanished as the engines were speeding up. She moved forward and swung away on a new course. Two men raced to the gun on the tail and the gun amidships on top. “Billiken” dived on the Zeppelin’s tail at a screaming 140 miles an hour. He passed diagonally across her from starboard to port. When 100 feet above and 200 feet away Dickey got in two bursts from his machine-gun. He used only fifteen cartridges [of Brock and Pomeroy ammunition].
As he cleared the Zeppelin “Billiken” made a sharp right-hand turn and found himself slightly below and heading straight for the enemy. He read her number, L. 43. Her immense size staggered him. Then he saw that she was on fire. Little spurts of flame stabbed out where the explosive bullets had torn the fabric, and the incendiary bullets had set alight the escaping hydrogen. Pulling back his controls, he lifted the boat over the airship, and just in time. With a tremendous burst of flame, so hot that all aboard the flying-boat felt the heat, the millions of cubic feet of hydrogen were set off. She broke in half. Each part, burning furiously, fell towards the water. The top gunner rolled into the flames and vanished. Three men fell out of the gondalas. Turning over and over they struck the water in advance of the wreckage. The remnants of the Zeppelin fell into the sea, and a heavy pillar of black smoke reared itself to the sky. The crew of the flying-boat fell on each other’s necks. They were delirious with joy. Everybody crowded into the control cockpit. During the demonstration “Billiken” got the heavy boat into extraordinary positions. Then “Hell bent for election” he beat it for home.’ News of their great achievement was initially kept secret, but both pilots were duly decorated, Hobbs with the D.S.O.
Another Zeppelin encounter - and several enemy submarines
A day or two later, on 17 June, Hobbs and Dickey won Their Lordships approbation for engaging with ‘great skill and dash’ an enemy seaplane, while on the 28 June they carried out their first submarine attack: ‘While preceding convoy and 10 miles S.W. of N. Hinder, sighted enemy submarine. Fired recognition signal and getting no reply we dropped three 100lb. bombs which were observed to fall in line 10 feet apart about 10 feet in front of the periscope’ (his flying log book refers).
For his gallantry Dickey was awarded a Second Award Bar to his D.S.C.
www.dnw.co.uk
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