Athlete of the week: Bob Dixon, RCAF pilot
'He was a pioneering sportsman ... but he liked to fly air planes, shoot people and get paid for it.'
Name: Robert "Bob" Dixon
Born: 1908
Died: 1941, in an RCAF plane crash
Sports: Javelin, Track, Lacrosse
Hometown: Richmond, B.C.
Claims to Fame: Javelin champion, RCAF fighter pilot, mercenary, mayoral body guard, rascal
Story: On Jan. 11, 1941, Robert Dixon was in the air north of Winnipeg, flying a fighter plane that had just arrived, fresh off a U.S. assembly line.
The Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot did what he had done dozens of times before and put the plane into a loop-the-loop.
It crested and began to descend towards the earth. No one knows why it never leveled off.
Dixon was killed on impact. He was 32.
His death was covered extensively by the newspapers of the day, one highlighting Dixon's "enthusiasm for airplanes and adventure." But his name has faded with the passing time.
Now, 75 years after his death, a push to get Robert "Bob" Dixon inducted into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame is shining a spotlight on a remarkable life story that reads like something ripped from an Indian Jones movie script.
"Sure, he was a pioneering sportsman," said Joe Hoar, Dixon's great-nephew, who is spearheading the nomination.
"But there's the other side too, which is that he liked to fly airplanes and shoot people and get paid for it."
Gold medals, Olympics, Mann Cup
First, the athletic credentials which are surely Hall of Fame worthy:
- Gold medal in javelin, 1934 British Empire Games (unconfirmed world record).
- Canadian javelin and shot put champion, 1934.
- 1932 Olympian in lacrosse (he ended up coaching the team but did not play in Los Angeles).
- 1930 Mann Cup champion with the New Westminster Salmonbellies.
A scrapbook of old newspaper clippings reveals Dixon's early years — from all-around athlete and "speed demon" on the "famous" High School of Commerce track team (which included two-time Olympic gold medalist Percy Williams), to his move to the University of Southern California where he was described as a better prospect for the 1936 Berlin Olympics "than any other javelin thrower who can represent the United States."
But Dixon never made it to Berlin.
Thirst for adventure
Hoar remembers a story his late mother used to tell about the time Uncle Bob flew his plane low over the family farm on Lulu Island (now Richmond).
"He dropped oranges from the plane onto the fields, and the children would scramble around to find them," recounts Hoar.
Dixon had learned to fly at the Lulu Island Flying Field, likely drawn there by the personality trait that would most influence his short life.
"He was a thrill seeker," said Hoar. "He was young ... and he had a sense of fun."
Dixon's thirst for adventure grew. He enrolled in a school for machine gunners near Los Angeles, joined a group of California-based mercenaries and headed to China.
There he was paid to fly Russian-built biplanes and wage war against the Japanese.
Dixon did two tours in China, somehow becoming the right-hand man of influential Chinese general Chang-Tso-Lin, according to newspaper reports.
"He was a confident guy who could talk his way into anything," said Hoar, noting that Dixon's charm also gained him a job as Vancouver mayor Gerry McGeers's masseuse, bodyguard and driver for a time.
'Crazy tragedy of it all'
Dixon was thriving in China in 1939, but when World War II broke out, he immediately paid his own way home to join the Royal Canadian Air Force.
"He was just itching to do the same thing here," said Hoar. "As soon as he could serve his country, he did."
The RCAF put his thousands of hours of flying experience to good use. Dixon trained young pilots and ferried new planes across the U.S. border before putting them through their paces as a test pilot.
Hoar says it's hard to reconcile how Dixon died, especially knowing what he survived.
"He had umpteen opportunities to crash flying those Russian rust buckets in China. The fact that he died in a brand new plane, doing a loop-the-loop without any artillery being fired, that's the crazy tragedy of it all."
Funeral scandal
Dixon was engaged to a woman he had met in Shanghai when he died.
But at his funeral, two women showed up, both claiming to be romantically involved with him.
"It was a scandal," laughs Hoar, who bears some resemblance to his late great-uncle.
"But let's be honest, he was a good looking guy!"