Billy Bishop

One rainy day in England in 1915, Bishop was checking on some horses as a Cavalry Officer in the 7th Canadian Mounted Rifles during the First World War. Mired up to his knees in mud, Billy heard the distinct sound of an airplane overhead. It landed in a nearby field, with the pilot seeking and securing directions, then the trim little biplane took off. “When I turned to slog my way back through the mud, my mind was made up,” Bishop later wrote. He would meet his enemy in the sky.

Shortly afterwards, Lieutenant William Avery “Billy” Bishop applied for a transfer. Two months later, he became a Royal Flying Corps observer, setting his career on a trajectory to become Canada’s top flying ace, a world-famous aerial duellist, and a founding father of Canadian aviation.

When Bishop earned his wings in November 1915, the average lifespan of a First World War fighter pilot was 11 days. In spite of these odds (and being sent back to flight school), Bishop persevered, flying with such abandon that he was admired as fearless by many and considered reckless by some. According to legend, he returned from one combat mission with 210 bullet holes in his plane.

Bishop’s aerial strategy was the surprise attack. He won victory after victory, earning the nickname “Hell’s Handmaiden” from his enemies. A skilled sharpshooter, Billy attributed his sharp eye and steady hand to a youthful pastime of hunting small game in the Ontario bush. After downing 22 planes, Bishop became flight leader of 60 Squadron based out of Filescamp Farm, France. Dogfights dominated the skies over the Western Front, and Billy met the notorious rival Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron himself, in a skirmish though neither was victorious.

During the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917, Bishop shot down 12 planes and was given the Military Cross and a promotion to Captain. In June of the same year, Bishop flew his Nieuport 17 across enemy lines to attack a German airfield. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for the daring solo attack, the first Canadian pilot to receive such distinction (to read the citation, see Appendix 2: RCAF Victoria Cross Recipients). One year later, after downing five Pfalz scouts in five minutes, Bishop earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for “unrelenting valour.” By the end of the war, Bishop was credited with destroying 72 enemy aircraft and promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. The era of the flying ace had arrived. As “ace of aces,” Billy Bishop would serve as a role model for generations to come.

As Lieutenant-Colonel George A. Drew wrote in Canada’s Fighting Airmen, “It is true that Richthofen and Fonck exceeded his total by a few machines (Richthofen, the German, brought down 80 and Fonck, the French ace, brought down 75), but in the short period of his active service during 1918, Major Bishop proved himself beyond question the most brilliant aerial duellist the world has known.”