US crewman Thomas Dickerson, who was also attached to the ill-fated R38 but not on board the fatal flight. Shown is an extract from his log book listing his flights on the R32 and R80.
I have had the great pleasure of hearing from Thom Dickerson, the son of Thomas Dickerson, the US R38 crew member shown left. Thom is a professional photographer and luckily for us has been restoring the photographs taken by his father throughout his career. Thom has some fabulous images of the crew members and the R38 and other UK airships. Like his British counterparts Thomas started his career in the Navy in 1917 and was then selected as part of a small group to be sent to the UK to receive Airship training. He trained on the R32 and R80 airships – the R32 was one of the early ships built at Cardington by the Short Brothers back in 1919 and the R80 was a much-admired ship designed by Barnes Wallis who of course went on to design the successful R100.
Initially the US team were at Howden but at some point, would have transferred to Cardington to take up training on the R38. It is not known whether these men lived in some of the relatively new houses in Shortstown or were billeted on the main site – certainly huts were in place on the camp to facilitate naval personnel. Perhaps more information will come to light in the future.
Shown here an extract of the flight log of Thomas Dickerson.
Luckily as it transpired for Thomas a last-minute change was made to the R38 crew on a training flight over the River Humber and he was not on board when it crashed. However, many of his colleagues were to lose their lives including Lieut Commander Maxfield who appears on the log book above as Captain on the training flights.
After the R38 tragedy Thomas returned to the US where he worked on The Shenandoah, a US airship as an Engineering Chief. Again, fortune favoured him as he was not on the last flight of this ship when it crashed in 1924. From this date on he continued his career in aviation and died aged 66 in 1962.Thom has more details and fantastic photos of his father on the link below:
Thanks must go to Thom for allowing these images to be shown.