by Miles Constable

William Avery Bishop was born on February 8, 1894, to William and Margaret Bishop of Owen Sound, Ontario. He was the middle child of three. His father was Grey County registrar and a strict Liberal, but he had a conservative attitude to life. Billy had a tough life at school, he was required to wear a suit and tie to school, he had a slight lisp, he preferred swimming and riding to hockey, and lacrosse, and he seemed to prefer the company of girls. This all made him the butt of many jokes and jests.

However, he did not tolerate the jests for long. He would never show any fear and attacked like a madman. His fists won him acceptance on the school ground, and his natural talent at individualistic sports gained him the respect of his peers. He was basically a good natured boy, the class clown at Owen Sound Collegiate. His younger sister Louie encouraged him to do better at what ever he attempted. They were very close throughout their lives. He used to charge her money to take out her friends on dates.

That is how he met Margaret Burden, a granddaughter of Timothy Eaton, the department store millionaire. He loved her at first site, and determined that he would marry her. However, he still charged Louie $5 for the priviledge of dating Margaret.

In 1911, at age 17, his parents sent him to Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario as his father knew he wouldn't get into the University of Toronto with his mediocre marks. He wasn't an academic and found the entrance exam to be hard, despite the aid of a tutor. Life at college was hard as he was expected to do well in studies, to do well in team sports, and to follow instructions without question. His elder brother Worth was known as the highest achieving cadet ever to grace Kingston's halls.

Billy's individualistic personality chaffed at every aspect of the rigid military attitudes. He failed his first year and was allowed to enter the second year of studies only on the basis that he stay longer at college to make up what he missed in the first year. His second year was better and he received good pass marks. The third year, however, was nearly his undoing. He was caught using crib sheets on the May 1914 final exam, actually he handed them in with his paper. A final decision on his expulsion was delayed until the end of summer, but the beginnings of the war cut short his education and eliminated this problem.

"I had never given much thought to being a soldier, even after my parents had sent me to the Royal Military College at Kingston, when I was seventeen years of age. I will say for my parents that they had not thought much of me as a professional soldier either. But they did think, for some reason or other, that a little military discipline at the Royal Military College would do me a lot of good - and I suppose it did."

Due to his prowess on a horse and his military "education", he was quickly commissioned into the Mississauga Horse of Toronto, a cavalry detachment of the 2nd Canadian Division. Fortunately for Bishop, he was hospitalized with pneumonia when his unit left for the war with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. The early attempts at charging trenches defended by machine guns was disastrous for the cavalrymen. He was then assigned to the 14th Battalion, Canadian Mounted Rifles, being formed in London, Ontario.

Nearly on the eve of embarking for England Billy proposed to his long time girl friend Margaret Burden, and was accepted. She was one of the granddaughters of Timothy Eaton, the department store millionaire.

The requisitioned cattle ship Caledonia was to take the 14th and their horses to England. Before them were two weeks in the North Atlantic, with stormy weather, sea sick men and horses and German U-Boats. Once in England the 14th was sent to Shorncliffe on the Kent coast. Unceasing rain made life miserable in camp as the mud mixed with manure. The war was settling in to a pattern with high casualties from trench warfare. Bishop saw this and became depressed at the prospects of being in a cavalry unit in a trench war. One day in July, 1915 a Nieuport biplane (probably an Ni.11 "Bébé") landed briefly for the pilot to get his bearings in a nearby field.

"It landed hesitatingly in a nearby field as if scorning to brush its wings against so sordid a landscape; then away again up into the clean grey mists. How long I stood there gazing into the distance I do not know, but when I turned to slog my way back through the mud my mind was made up. I knew there was only one place to be on such a day - up above the clouds and in the summer sunshine. I was going into the battle that way. I was going to meet the enemy in the air."

He found out from a group of Royal Flying Corps officers that Lord Hugh Cecil at the War Office could arrange transfers to the RFC. But before he could get to see Lord Cecil he again contracted pneumonia and spent time in hospital. Once out he pursued his dream of joining the RFC. On leave he went to London and presented himself to Lord Cecil as a willing trainee pilot. Cecil was impressed with the young man and informed Bishop that he would have at least a six month wait to become a trainee pilot. By that time Bishop would be in the trenchs and lost in the war beurocracy.

However, if he wanted to join the RFC as an observer he could transfer immediately. He took the offer back to Shorncliffe with him and discussed it with his CO. He recommended that Bish take it, a bird in the hand was better than two in the bush. It got him out of the horror of trench warfare and one step closer to flying. He joined the RFC as soon as possible and was transferred to Netheravon, 11 miles north of Salisbury, Wiltshire.

The first aircraft Billy Bishop flew in was the AVRO 504. The AVRO had started the war as a unarmed bomber and reconnaissance aircraft, but it was discovered to be seriously underpowered for the job. It was relegated to training and Zeppelin interceptions.

"I loved those first few flights in an old training bus. I don't think she made more than fifty miles per hour; and as for climbing, she struggled and shook and gasped like a freight train going up a mountain side. But it was thrilling enough for me in those days, despite the fact that I soon began to envy the pilot who had all the fun of running the machine and could make it do a few lame and decrepit stunts."

Upon receiving the "Flying O" badge of an observer, Bishop's first assignment was to No. 21 Sqdn, RFC, based at Netheravon. The squadron received it's first "modern" aircraft, the R.E. 7 made by the Royal Aircraft Factory. The R.E. stood for "Reconnaisance Experimental". Loaded only with the pilot and observer and a machine gun and camera it could barely maintain 70 mph as a top speed, and could reach an altitude of only 5,000 feet after 30 minutes of flying. The aircraft was a sitting duck for the Fokker monoplanes with their forward firing, synchronised Spandau machine guns.

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Bishop's debut with No. 21 Sqdn was not auspicious. The squadron were under the command of Maj. Richey of the General Head Quarters Wing along with No. 12 Sqdn at St. Omer. The two squadrons were to carry out strategic reconnaisance and patrol work for HQ from St. Omer to the North Sea Coast. The fear of attack from Fokkers was so great that a typical sortie included a single B.E.2c reconnaisance machine with 4 R.E. 7s, 3 B.E.2c patrol aircraft, 4 F.E.s and a Bristol scout. In all, twelve airplanes escorted one reconnaisance aircraft.

One of their standard roles was as forward artillery observers. They would locate targets the previous day, and then direct the fall of shells from the air.

"It is no child's play to circle above a German battery observing for half an hour or more, with the machine tossing about in air, tortured by exploding shells and black shrapnel puffballs coming nearer and nearer to you like the ever-extended finger-tips of some giant hand of death. But it is just part of the never-ceasing war." And there was photo-reconnaisance of the front.

"Every day there are hundreds of photographs to be taken, so that the British map-makers can trace each detail of the German trench positions and can check any changes in the enemy zone. Information is to be gained at all times by all manner of reconnaisance - some of them carrying you fifty to sixty miles in the enemy country." Last, but far from least, is the fighting patrol.

"Then, there is the fighting patrol work which goes on all hours. The patrol is not on our side of the line. It is far over the German lines to keep the enemy machines from coming too close even to their own front trenches."

Early spring of 1916 was a rough time for Bishop. He was severely shaken when the truck he was driving collided with another. He was struck unconscious for two days when a piece of the airplane he was working on fell on his head. He had an infected tooth a week later and then suffered a knee injury during a heavy landing.

In May he was, luckily, sent back to England on sick leave and so was spared the June allied offensive on the Somme Valley. No. 21 Sqdn suffered heavy casualties in their underpowered, under-gunned aircraft. Odds are, Bishop would likely have died in one of the interminable flights over enemy lines spotting enemy ammunition dumps, train stations or store houses. Altogether, Bishop spent four months as an observer on the front lines. For Bishop the stay in hospital was a turning point, for he met and was befriended by Lady St. Helier, a famous socialite who knew everyone who counted and many who didn't.

Once out of the hospital, Lady St. Helier offered him a room in her house to rest and recuperate. She managed to pull strings and had Bishop evacuated back to Canada for nearly a year. Bishop could have remained in Canada as he had a slight heart murmur and a bad knee injury. However, he was resolved to becoming a pilot. In Sept., 1916 he returned to England.

A series of medical examinations nearly spelled the end of any flying for Bishop, the doctors repeatedly rejected him as medically unfit. Again, Lady St. Helier came to his rescue and influenced the doctors. Bishop was given a cursory examination and passed for fit. By November, 1916 he was in training at Upavon on Salisbury Plain.

The aircraft Billy Bishop learned to fly in was a Maurice Farman "Shorthorn". The Shorthorn carried it's crew tandem, the student in front, the pilot behind. It was not all that different from the Wright brother's airplane. It was useless against the mounting aerial opposition from the Germans, who had a new Fokker monoplane, so it had been relegated to pilot training.

Flight instruction consisted of getting into a Shorthorn with dual controls and copying what the pilot did. The machine was too noisy for communication and the concept of ground school was yet to be developed. The instructors were either recuperating from front-line action or were new to flying themselves, so they had no real ideas of how to fly an aircraft in anything other than under ordinary conditions. They did not teach aerial combat manouvers, spin control, or evasive tactics.

The novice pilots were on their own. Bishop was a bit of a ham-handed student, but even after crashing a Farman he graduated from "flight school" with about four hours of flying time to his credit and wore the double flying wings of a pilot. He was posted to a Home Defence squadron (No. 37) doing night flying in a BE2c as a deterrent to Zeppelins. Bishop spent many hours night flying around southern England mostly improving his flying.

Zeppelins had been bombing targets in southern England since 1914, and night patrols were supposed to protect the populace against them. In two months Bishop did not see a single one. If he had it probably wouldn't have mattered as the Zeppelins learned quickly to fly higher than the ceiling for most British fighters. In Feb. 1917 Bishop was posted to No. 60 Sqdn, RFC stationed near Arras, France. It was the hottest theatre of the war. They had been flying Morane-Saulnier "Bullets" , but had suffered heavy casualties. When Bishop joined them they were flying Nieuport 17s.

Across the trenchs from 60 Sqdn was the famed "Flying Circus" of Baron Manfred von Richthofen. The Canadian rookey would face the best fliers in Germany, and the highest scoring aces in the world. It looked grim, the average life span of a rookey pilot in the sector was 11 days. There were only some simple orientation flights before he was thrown into the fight.

His first dogfight came on March 25, 1917. He was flying "Tail End Charley" the last aircraft of a flight of four, and the most dangerous position (perhaps another reason for the short life span of a rookie). Three Albatros D.IIIs dove on them, one getting onto the rear end of the Sqdn Commander. Bishop dove on the Albatros and placed shots along the fuselage, the Albatros dove away with Bishop following. Near the ground the German pilot pulled out of his faked death dive only to find Bishop still on his tail. Bishop fired from point blank range and the Albatros thundered into the ground. His first fight, his first kill. Most veterans waited a long time before downing another aircraft, if they survived.

The Sqdn Commander, Jack Scott, promoted him to a flight commander, probably in gratitude. This was a serious blunder as Bishop had been in only one fight and had not worked out tactics or had any real experience in combatting Germans in the air. In the next two flights four of his pilots were killed in ambushes, but he was congratulated on the "success" of the flights. High casualties were expected in aerial warfare. This shook him up considerably. He thought about tactics and practiced his shooting on the nearby gunnery range.

He quickly adopted tactics similar to Albert Ball, and many of the air aces since. His tactics were to gain the upper hand through surprise and altitude. Fight with the sun to your back, and don't give the Hun an even chance. Kill quickly and evade. Circle, and kill again. He perfected the deflection shot, that is, leading the aircraft in front so the bullets and the enemy met in space and time. Billy Bishop also had what every air ace has, an excellent sense of situational awareness. Knowing where you are in relation to the enemy, the ground and allies in four dimensions, and how to exploit the situation to your advantage. No one taught him this, he just had the raw abilities.

Go to Part II .