Thomas Antony Dakin

Thomas Dakin was born on 2 April 1919 and enrolled at the School on 28 April 1931.

Thomas left school in July 1934 to take up an apprenticeship with the RAF. He was serving as a Sergeant with the Royal Air Force on board HMS Avenger, an aircraft carrier, when he died on 15 November 1942, aged 23.

HMS Avenger was in the Mediterranean off Gibraltar when she was struck by a torpedo. The resultant catastrophic explosions ripped out the centre section of the ship and she sunk in under 5 minutes with only 12 survivors out of 555 crew.

Thomas is remembered on the Runnymede Memorial overlooking the River Thames. The Air Forces Memorial commemorates by name over 20,000 airmen who were lost in the Second World War during operations from bases in the United Kingdom and North and Western Europe, and who have no known grave.

His name is also recorded on the Grammar School’s War Honours Board — alongside the names of all of the Grammar School’s alumni to die in the First and Second World Wars.