Anyone with any additional information is requested to contact our friends at 51 Squadron, they can be emailed "HERE".

Took off at 23.41 hrs to attack Bremen along with 13 other training aircraft and 433 other Squadron aircraft.
It is reported that the raid was heavy with 848 houses destroyed and Bremen industry suffering considerable damage with the Lloyds dynamo works put out of act for some two weeks and various parts of the Focke-Wulf factory for up to 8 days. 5 nearly completed aircraft were destroyed and 3 more damaged. 70 people on the ground were killed and a further 371 injured.
15 Wellington's, 2 Lancaster's 1 Halifax, 1 Hampden, 1 Stirling and 1 Whitley were lost together with 87 aircrew killed and another 28 being made P.O.W.'S.

Michael and Peter (Courtesy 51 Squadron History Society)

Wellington X3169 we shot down by Uffz. Wolf Gutter of 3./NJG3 25 Km. East North East of Lingen at a height of 4,500 Mtrs. The combat took place at 03.45 hrs. Uffz. Gutter was wounded on the 14/15th July 1944 after baling out after air combat. It is thought that he survived the war but no further information is available to us yet.

F/O. Michael Dickenson second from the right, taken whilst a P.O.W. at Stalag Luft 1 (Courtesy 51 Squadron History Society)

F/O. Michael Dickenson had an older brother Sq/Ldr. Peter Dickenson who was killed on 7/8th November 1941 See "HERE".

The son of Michael Dickenson has written a small article on his father's life:

"My father was a rather private man – reserved and not overly communicative – a trait I fear I have inherited from him. Like my father I was sent to boarding school from the age of 8, which meant that I didn’t really get to know him until much later in life, and even then I didn’t really know him as well as I would have liked.

Born on 25 September 1921 in Broughton, near Manchester, he went to Prep School and subsequently moved on to what was then almost a brand new Public School – Bryanston, to which I followed him 32 years later. At school he was a keen sportsman, as attested by many photographs of school rugby, hockey and cricket teams, in some of which he was clearly the captain.

Having won a place at Cambridge, the war intervened and he interrupted his education to follow his older brother by joining the RAF.

After training, he piloted Wellingtons in Bomber Command and saw service, amongst other places, in Egypt and Malta as well as operating from England. On 14 September 1942 he was shot down over Germany after a raid on Bremen. Being unable to tell his crew to bale out as a result of the intercom having been damaged by flak, he made a selfless decision to crash land his plane, which he managed successfully on some heath land, enabling all the crew to walk away from the crash. After 10 days on the run with his radio operator, Jake Akehurst, they were captured by the German civil Police. On realising it was his 21st birthday the following day, one of the police officers’ wives baked and presented him with a cake. A failed attempt to escape from a train resulted in a spell as Prisoner of War in Stalag Luft III, home of the Great Escape. He scattered many pounds of freshly dug earth around the compound from long pockets but, perhaps fortunately, he was not one of the escapers, 50 of whom were shot after recapture.

His experience as a PoW made him determined to avoid an office job. This led to forgoing his place at Cambridge in order to study for a degree in Forestry at Edinburgh, with the intention of following his late brother’s wife to New Zealand, where a new Forest Department was being established. Fearing being left alone, however, his mother persuaded her only remaining son not to desert her, so he stayed in England and joined the Forestry Commission.

At Edinburgh University he pursued his passion for hockey and cricket, winning blues in both, captaining the University hockey team and playing several times in the Scottish Universities teams against the English Universities in both sports. Some of Fiona’s and my earliest memories of him are watching him play cricket, both in local teams and, for a week every summer, in Dorset, where he played for the Bryanston Butterflies in a series of matches against other Dorset schools’ old boys’ teams. One of his proudest possessions was a cricket ball with an engraved plaque presented after a particularly successful spell of bowling. Fiona’s current enthusiasm for cricket is a direct result of this early experience.

R.A.F. Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire (A.R.Society archives)

In later years a passion for golf took over from cricket, and his competitiveness and aptitude for ball games of all sorts showed through in this as well – he regularly played for Honiton veterans teams until age finally put a stop to it not many years ago.

My father was not the most practical of people – I don’t think he ever really got to grips with many of the standard household chores, and DIY was certainly not one of his strong points Perhaps for this reason, or maybe because of his experiences as a PoW, he needed a companion in the form of a wife to help him get through the rigours of life.

For over 20 years from 1946 this was Fiona’s and my mother, Pat, but then, in the late 1960s, he met Lisa while working in the Forestry Commission offices in Chichester. A strong attachment formed and in 1972 my parents divorced and my father married Lisa. Some 20 happy years followed, despite continued frustration with the lack of career opportunities within the Forestry Commission. The narrowness of his qualifications and experience unfortunately gave him little opportunity to pursue any other career. Instead he found relief in the form of secondments to far flung and exotic places – Fiji and subsequently Jamaica, which saw him pretty much through to retirement.

Lisa’s sudden death came as a terrible shock to us all, and hit my father particularly hard. Recognising his need for companionship, however, he quite quickly found Margaret, who was in a similar position. Their marriage prompted a move from Bognor Regis to Ottery St Mary, where several more happy years ensued until Margaret’s life was sadly and suddenly cut short by a stroke.

Once again my father found the prospect of life on his own unbearable, but he was lucky enough to find a delightful and devoted wife in Beryl, to whom he has been married for nearly 11 years. I am glad that they had a fair number of good years together before the cruel affliction of dementia struck. I would like to pay tribute to Beryl for the magnificent way she has coped with an increasingly difficult situation as my father’s mind progressively deteriorated. Thank you Beryl, for all you have done for my father.

Through these marriages my father gained 11 step-children and countless step-grandchildren, as well as four grandchildren and a great-granddaughter of his own. Even if he didn’t always show it, I know he was always immensely proud of all of them and their achievements, and was eternally grateful for the way in which they were all generous enough to welcome him so warmly into his new families. I pay tribute to my father – Michael Dickenson, keen sportsman, dedicated Forest Officer, and devoted husband, father and step-father."

Sq/Ldr. Peter Dickenson, brother of F/O. Michael Dickenson - killed on 7/8th November 1941 (Courtesy 51 Squadron History Society)

Burial details:

None - all taken as P.O.W.'s
Information supplied to us by 51 Squadron History Society.
With thanks to Bill Chorley - "Bomber Command Losses Vol 3", Theo Boiten - "German Nightfighter War Diaries Vol 2", Martin Middlebrook "Bomber Command War Diaries"

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