Career
He was director of Plans, War Office between 1939 and 1941 and became the first Chief Combined Secretary British Joint Staff Mission Washington in 1942. He was described as being "at the heart of allied military policy making." In the winter of 1940-1941, before the United States. had formally entered the war, Dykes was selected for an unusual, but important mission: to escort Colonel William Joseph Donovan, soon to become head of the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency) and head of United States. intelligence, on a fact-finding tour of the Mediterranean. At the time of his death, Dykes was serving as senior British secretary to the combined Chiefs of Staffs.
He posthumously received the and was given a memorial service at Washington Cathedral in Washington, District of Columbia, attended by British ambassador Lord Halifax, General George Marshall, Admiral Ernest King, Admiral Sir Percy Noble and many other dignitaries.
The District of Columbia correspondent for The Times called Dykes "one of the most popular British officers who ever came to Washington." His war time diaries were edited by Alex Danchev and published under the title Establishing the Anglo-American Alliance: The Second World War Diaries of Brigadier Vivian Dykes in 1990. Dykes married Ada Winifred (née Smyth) in 1922.
