VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- Retired Rear Adm. Robert E. Dixon, credited with sinking the first Japanese aircraft carrier in World War II, is dead at the age of 75.
Dixon, whose message 'Scratch one flattop' was quoted in almost every account of the war in the Pacific, died Wednesday in a Virginia Beach Hospital.
Graveside services with full military honors will be at noon Saturday in Norfolk's Woodlawn Memorial Gardens.
Dixon was a lieutenant commander in charge of dive bombers on the carrier USS Lexington during the May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea. He planted one of a dozen bombs that, with seven torpedoes, sank the Japanese carrier Shosho.
Chicago Tribune war correspondent Stanley Johnston was aboard the Lexington when Dixon's squad attacked the Japanese ship.
He reported that 'all of us were anxious to know the results of the attack. We were confident the squadron would do a good job but this was, after all, the first such attack on a carrier by American crews.'
Johnston said he waited anxiously in the Lexington's radio room for word of the attack.
'All the tension on the carrier exploded the moment we heard Cmdr. Dixon's voice come in strong and clear: 'Scratch one flattop! Dixon to carrier: Scratch one flattop.'
Dixon was awarded the Navy Cross for that and later served aboard the carriers Yorktown, Enterprise, Saratoga and Bunker Hill, participating in most of the major carrier actions of the war.
Dixon commanded the carrier Valley Forge during the Korean War and later became assistant chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics for research and development. He was responsible for the conception, development and production of the F-4 Phantom jet fighter, the most widely used fighter during the past 20 years.




