The drizzle became rain as he climbed and he could hardly see through the windscreen. Over Arras the ceiling was a little higher. He turned to the right, saw that he was headed along the Cambrai road, then climbed to just under the clouds.
He experienced a loneliness such as he had never before known. He had a hollow feeling in his stomach—which he suddenly realized was hunger. He wished he had eaten some breakfast before he left.
TWELVE
THE AUDACE
OF IT
BEFORE FIRST LIGHT six Albatros scouts and a two-seater had been wheeled out of the hangars of Estourmel aerodrome, the base of Jagdstaffel V. The scouts’ engines were warming up. One pilot was already in his plane preparing to take off. The others were straggling across the field from breakfast in the mess.
Without warning a silver Nieuport with a blue nose streaked over the roof of the hangars, spraying bullets among the waiting planes.
Bishop had no idea where he was. He had lost his way in the cloud and had flown further into enemy territory than he intended. When he descended from the overcast he found himself over a deserted aerodrome. So he hunted around for another field and a few minutes later he sighted the shadowy shapes of hangar buildings away to the right. The aerodrome that Bishop had found was Estourmel, near Cambrai, although he did not know it at the time. In fact in his report he stated it to be either Esnes or Awoignt. He came down to two hundred feet and turned towards them. As he drew near he saw the line of machines and went into a shallow dive. His first burst carried him to the far edge of the field, where he pulled his Nieuport into a tight climbing turn. He could see men running on to the field and a machine-gun opened fire at him from the ground. Bullets ripped his wingtips. He swerved to dodge the bullets that crackled all around him. The Albatros pilot who was already in his plane had gunned his motor and was gaining speed for takeoff. Bishop went after it.
The German fighter was only ten feet off the ground when Bishop pressed the firing button from sixty yards’ range. Without enough speed to dodge the attack, the Albatros took the full blast of a burst of fifteen rounds, sideslipped, and crashed. Another Albatros started to roar across the field. Bishop fired at it from a hundred yards and missed, but the attack so unnerved the pilot that he crashed into a tree at the edge of a field, tearing off the right wings. Bishop fired one last volley into the wrecked machine, then hauled back on the control stick and climbed.
Two more machines now started to take off in opposite directions. (“There won’t be any wind at that time of the morning and the planes will be able to get off in any direction,” Grid Caldwell had warned. “In that case I’ll just have to streak for home,” Bishop had replied.) But he had no choice but to stay and fight it out.
One Albatros flew away from the aerodrome and hovered at a safe distance, but the other made straight for Bishop, who turned as the German pilot closed in behind him. The enemy tried to follow, taking a fast shot. Bishop saw an opening and fired. Twice the machines circled around each other, but neither pilot could get in a position for a decisive burst.
Once again as in many another battle, the Nieuport’s sole advantage over the Albatros—its manoeuvrability—came to Bishop’s rescue. He got underneath and at a slight angle to the Albatros, and finished his first drum of ammunition in a long burst. It struck the fuselage just in front of the pilot and put the engine out of action. The Albatros crashed four hundred feet from the aerodrome.
Bishop was now intent on making his escape. No doubt the aerodrome he was attacking had sent an alarm to other nearby fields, and Heaven knew how many fighters were swarming toward the scene. One comfort was that no more planes were attempting to take off from the field.
For the moment he had forgotten the fourth enemy plane, which so far had stayed clear of the fighting, but it now was bearing in. The German pilot opened fire at three hundred yards’ range. Bishop saw the flashes from the twin Spandau guns, and turned away sharply. His own ammunition drum was empty.
Changing an ammunition drum while flying a plane was a tricky job at best, and to do it while dodging the bullets of a skilled and tenacious pursuer was a difficult feat of sleight-of-hand. Bishop had practised the procedure endlessly—minus the enemy plane, of course—and somehow he managed it now without giving the Albatros pilot a fatal advantage. Bishop had no intention of continuing the dogfight. His aim was to get away from there as quickly as possible.
But to make his escape he would either have to shoot down the Albatros or chase it away. He pointed the nose of his plane in the general direction of the other machine, pressed his thumb on the Lewis gun’s firing button, and kept it there. The German pilot had undoubtedly never had the entire ninety-nine rounds of a Lewis gun’s ammunition drum thrown at him in one prolonged burst. He broke off the fight and dived toward his aerodrome.
Bishop did not wait to see his opponent land. He turned west and climbed with all the power he could coax from the Le Rhône engine. His gun was smoking from the stress of firing a whole drum of ammunition without interruption. When it had cooled after a few miles, Bishop disconnected it from its mount and hurled it overboard. It was now dead weight and he would need all the speed he could muster.
For the first time that morning the clouds had broken, and here and there shafts of sunlight shone through. Bishop knew that such cloud formations made ideal lurking places for enemy scouts, and he kept a wary watch as he flew from patch to patch. Three miles west of Cambrai he sighted four enemy planes cloud-hopping in the same direction, two thousand feet above him. At first he caught only fleeting glimpses of the planes through the clear patches. Further west the clouds disappeared and the five planes were flying in a clear sky.
Bishop had never been in a tighter spot. The Germans did not appear to have seen him—yet. But at any moment one of the pilots might look down—and four planes with eight guns blazing would dive on the slower unarmed Nieuport. Bishop tried to keep his position directly under the enemy formation, in what he hoped might be a blind spot. Cautiously he followed their manoeuvres: as they turned, he turned. The general direction of the formation was taking him further and further south. He knew that he would soon have to make a break for it. He counted ten slowly, then dived in the direction of the front lines at full power. When he looked back the German planes were continuing their patrol—the enemy pilots never became aware of his presence.
His dive brought Bishop down to a thousand feet, and as he crossed the enemy lines anti-aircraft fire straddled the Nieuport. He dived, climbed and swerved to dodge the flying shrapnel. Time and again he heard a sharp snapping sound of shrapnel ripping the tight-stretched fabric of his plane. One of the lower wings, already damaged in the attack on Estourmel, now looked like tattered clothing flapping on a clothesline in a high wind. The barrage suddenly and mercifully ceased as he crossed the lines near Bapaume.
Bishop turned northwest towards Filescamp Farm. It was exactly fifteen minutes after five. The sky was calm and crystal clear and oddly haunting. The exhilaration of the early morning battle was gone. Bishop began to feel ill: “I flew in a daze. I was feeling queer at my stomach. The excitement and the reaction afterwards had been too much. My head was going around and around, and something had to happen. For the only time in my life I thought I was losing my senses. It was a horrible feeling and I also had the sensation that I would suffer from nausea any minute. Nothing mattered except the struggle to bring the plane safely to earth.”
At half past five Bishop was over Filescamp Farm and feeling a little better. The aerodrome was still asleep, just as he had left it an hour and a half before. It seemed impossible that since then he had experienced the greatest adventure of his life.
Jubilantly, he fired off light after light from his Very pistol to signal his triumph and arouse the slumberers below. A crowd of ground crewmen led by Corporal Walter Bourne ran to greet him as he climbed out of the cockpit holding up three fingers and calling out rather incoherently, “Three of them taking off, one in a
scrap—wicked ground fire—missed the other one.”
Bourne as usual turned his attention to the plane as soon as he saw Bishop was unhurt. He took in the innumerable holes and slashes in the wings, fuselage and tail, and uttered an incredulous whistle. “Beats me how the thing stayed in one piece, sir!”
Jack Scott reported Bishop’s early morning sortie to his immediate superior, George Pretyman at Wing Headquarters. By midmorning the news had spread across the Western Front. General Higgins, the brigade commander, wired congratulations, and so did the commander of the Flying Corps, General Trenchard, who wired Bishop that the raid was “the greatest single show of the war.” And before the day was out the army commander-in-chief, Sir Douglas Haig, had added his own congratulations.
Maurice Baring, whose essays and books on the RFC remain classics, made this note of Bishop’s exploit in his diary: “Think of the audace of it.” And Molesworth, who arrived back from leave that afternoon, described it in a letter home: “Our stunt merchant’s star turn was shooting up an aerodrome. You can imagine how the fat old Huns ran, as nothing like this ever happened to them before. I believe his name has been put in for something big in the decoration line.”
Billy Bishop’s mother and father.
Bishop as a Royal Military College Cadet.
Bishop as an observer in the Royal Flying Corps.
With 60 Squadron at Filescamp Farm in 1917. From left to right: Mongoose Soden, Bishop, Grid Caldwell, Moley Molesworth and Spencer Horn. Photo: Imperial War Museum, London
With King George V and other officers at Windsor Park in 1918.
Spencer Horn.
Arthur Benbow.
Bishop sighting through his Lewis gun on the Nieuport.
An Albatros D.V.: British soldiers looking at the German plane in Allied hands. Photo: Royal Canadian Air Force
German Fokker D.V. II. Photo: Royal Canadian Air Force
The S.E. 5A. Photo: Royal Canadian Air Force
Sopwith triplane of the R.N.A.S. Photo: Royal Canadian Air Force
The R.E. 7. Photo: Royal Canadian Air Force
Farman Shorthorn. Photo: Royal Canadian Air Force
The wedding of Billy Bishop to Margaret Burden at the Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in Toronto, 1917.
Billy Bishop and Margaret in 1917, soon after their marriage.
Bishop beside his Nieuport at Filescamp aerodrome, 1917.
Baron Manfred von Richthofen. Photo: Imperial War Museum, London
Bishop with group at Hounslow, 1918. Larry Callahan is second from right.
Some of Bishop’s decorations and trophies. Note the windshield with bullet hole in it the day he became an ace by shooting down his fifth enemy plane.
Eighty-five Squadron at St. Omer, France; formation of S.E. 5A’s with Bishop’s plane in the foreground. Photo: Royal Canadian Air Force
Combat report of the attack on Estourmel aerodrome that won Bishop the Victoria Cross.
Barker (left) with Bishop in the H.S. 2L at Muskoka Lakes, 1919.
Bishop with German air aces in Berlin, 1928. Goering is on Bishop’s left with his arm around him. Ernst Udet is third from right.
My father in front of our Montreal house with three of his favourite breed of dogs—chows.
Air Marshal Bishop with Prime Minister Winston Churchill at 10 Downing Street during the Battle of Britain.
With Hollywood stars at a party given in his honour at the Warner Bros. Studios.
With James Cagney during the filming of “Captains of the Clouds.”
My father pinning my pilot’s wings on my tunic, July, 1942. Photo: Royal Canadian Air Force
THIRTEEN
THE GAME
MOST of the aerial activity now centred around the battle lines to the north. A British air offensive was launched to soften up the enemy for a ground attack against Messines Ridge near Ypres. The Richthofen circus, which had been noticeably missing on the Arras front for the past month, had been moved north to Courtrai. But the tide had already changed. The Royal Flying Corps now had supremacy of the air.
To the south along the Drocourt-Quéant Switch the Germans continued their tactics of using low-flying two-seaters just inside their own lines to lure British fighter planes into anti-aircraft range. German scouts meanwhile contented themselves with watching for stragglers.
British fighter squadrons still maintained patrols along the front east of Vimy-Arras-St. Léger, where a month before the bloodiest fighting in aviation history had taken place. But “Hun hunting” became more and more frustrating. The Germans seemed determined to avoid a fight.
After the excitement of his raid on Estourmel Bishop found the regular uneventful patrols boring. So on June 8 he ventured alone toward Lille, where he hoped to find more action. He had climbed to twelve thousand when he saw six red Albatros scouts neatly arrayed in a three-layer formation. As he had done the first time he encountered that type of formation, he dived to attack the uppermost pair.
Those two pilots were so busy looking below for any luckless British planes that might venture into their trap that they did not see him coming. He opened fire from twenty yards. A burst of fifteen rounds sent one enemy plane down streaming smoke. Bishop continued his dive and escaped before the other pilots could gather their wits.
For the next week 60 Squadron seldom so much as sighted a German aircraft over the Arras front. The squadron, frustrated by this elusiveness on the part of the enemy, decided on a show of defiance—a “circus” of its own. Bishop led a formation of fifteen Nieuports after dinner one evening. They roamed the Switch at will and no German plane challenged them. What 60 Squadron did next was possibly the most blatant display of arrogance of the war in the air. The fifteen planes put on a display of aerial stunting directly over the German aerodrome at Epinoy, peeling off formation into stall turns, loops and rolls. The Germans at Epinoy preferred to watch the exhibition from the ground.
“We must have looked like a bunch of berserk eagles,” grinned “Black” Lloyd.“We should have charged the damned Huns admission.”
Next day Lloyd was killed in a fight with two Albatros scouts east of Monchy-le-Preux. Bishop was deeply affected. It was the first fatality in C Flight since Bloody April. Bishop’s state of mind changed abruptly from impatience at the enemy’s inactivity to hatred for the Germans who had killed his friend. That night he wrote to Margaret: “I am thoroughly downcast tonight. The Huns got Lloyd today, such a fine fellow too, and one of our best pilots. Sometimes this awful fighting in the air makes you wonder if you have a right to call yourself human. My honey, I am so tired of it all, the killing, the war. All I want is home and you.”
For nearly a month since returning from leave in England he had been fighting steadily. He seldom took the one-day-off-in-three to which he was entitled. Instead he flew alone with the objective, as he frankly admitted later, of increasing his score of victories. He was disappointed that he had been able to add only seven enemy planes in four weeks, and that included the raid on Estourmel.
With Lloyd’s death, some of the zest for the chase went out of Bishop. On June 18 he took his first leave since his return to France and went to Amiens for three days’ rest.
Amiens was hardly conducive to rest. The city was a favourite short-leave headquarters for the troops in the region. The Picardy capital offered an abundance of opportunities for revelry at oases like Charlie’s bar and Des Huitres. Fighting men, released for a few hours or a few days from the brutality (and as often the boredom) of war, crowded into the inns and cafés in pursuit of wine and women.
In Amiens Bishop met Ninette. By his own description she was beautiful, kind and affectionate. His story was that he had met her in a pharmacy. Later he admitted that while this was true, he had followed her into the pharmacy. When they had become well enough acquainted to exchange confidences (a matter of a few hours) Ninette confessed that she had seen him on more than one of his previous visits to Amiens, and wanted to meet him. “But I am not the kind o
f girl who goes to Charlie’s bar,” she pointed out virtuously, “so when I saw you walking down the street today I turned into the apothecary’s, hoping you would come there too.”
Bishop’s affair with Ninette was no mere garter-gathering adventure. It was too serious, for example, to reveal to Horn, Caldwell and other members of 60 Squadron who habitually roistered with him at Charlie’s—but serious enough to make him decide to tell Margaret. In just what terms he explained Ninette to his fiancée is not known. Margaret apparently “understood,” and certainly it made no difference to their relationship. But the “Ninette letter” was the only one of hundreds Bishop wrote her from overseas that Margaret did not keep. In later years Bishop remembered his affair with Ninette as being more therapeutic than romantic. “If it hadn’t been for Ninette,” he said, “I don’t think my nerves would have held.”(Years later when Bishop and Margaret were visiting France, Bishop was seized by an overwhelming desire to visit Amiens—and Ninette. Margaret wisely realized that the “beautiful, kind and affectionate” French girl of 1917 probably looked somewhat different now, and to preserve her husband’s illusions she persuaded him to abandon the idea.)
When Bishop got back to Filescamp Farm refreshed in body and spirit, he found that his Nieuport had been thoroughly overhauled and even fitted with a new skin. The repeated patching of bullet and shrapnel damage to wings, tail and fuselage had added to the weight and detracted from the smoothness of the faithful old machine with resulting loss of speed—the quality Bishop valued most in a plane. He celebrated the renovation of his plane by shooting down five enemy planes in as many days, and running his score to thirty-one. In the process he achieved a couple of minor “firsts” in his own career as a fighter pilot. One plane fell to the shortest burst he had ever used to down an opponent—ten shots. Another was destroyed at the longest range—over a hundred yards.
The Courage of the Early Morning Page 13
