Chief Petty Officer
Samuel Hughes
DIXON
,
DSM
Royal Navy
35
Samuel Dixon was born in October 1910, the son of Samuel and Agnes Dixon and entered the Royal Navy in 1928. He joined the submarine branch in February 1942 as a Petty Officer Torpedo Gunner’s Mate. He served in HM Submarines L26 and H50 before joining HMS SPLENDID in October 1942. Vice Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch, who had been his Commanding Officer at that time said of him later “..a calm and utterly reliable torpedo expert…one of the finest men I was privileged to be shipmates with…I certainly recommended him for a decoration…he richly deserved it.”
One of the survivors when SPLENDID was forced to the surface after a depth charge attack, Dixon was held as a PoW in Italy and then transferred to Germany. He was killed in a strafing raid by USAAF Mustang aircraft near Halberstadt on 19 February 1945 during a forced march by his German captors away from the advancing Red Army.
He left a widow, Agnes, in Folkestone, Kent and is buried in the Berlin 1939-1945 War Cemetery.