The Courage of the Early Morning Read online

  William Arthur Bishop wrote this biography as a result of the promise he made to his father before he died in 1956. The author’s own career in the RCAF began when he was presented with his wings by his father at Uplands, Ottawa, 1942. He subsequently served overseas as a Spitfire pilot with the First Canadian Squadron 401. Bishop’s biography of his father recreates the man about whom Arch Whitehouse wrote in The Years of the Sky Kings, “There never was so relentless a fighting airman in any war.”

  The Courage of the Early Morning

  BILLY

  BISHOP

  THE COURAGE OF THE

  EARLY MORNING

  A BIOGRAPHY OF THE GREAT ACE OF WORLD WAR I

  By William Arthur Bishop

  Thomas Allen Publishers

  Toronto

  Copyright © 1965 William Arthur Bishop

  First paperback edition copyright © 2011 William Arthur Bishop

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means – graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems – without the prior written permission of the publisher, or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Bishop, William Arthur, 1923–

  The courage of the early morning : a biography of Billy Bishop,

  the great ace of World War I / William Arthur Bishop.

  First published: Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 1965.

  ISBN 978-0-88762-739-2

  1. Bishop, William A., 1894-1956. 2. Fighter pilots—Canada—Biography.

  3. Great Britain. Royal Flying Corps—Biography. 4. World War, 1914–1918—

  Aerial operations, British. I. Title.

  UG626.2.B5B57 2011 940.4'4941092 C2010-908133-1

  Cover design: Sputnik Design Partners Inc.

  Cover image (airplane): Canadian Aviation and Space Museum—

  CSTMC/Collection, Image CASM-13418

  Cover illustration (soldiers): Dan Kangas

  Published by Thomas Allen Publishers,

  a division of Thomas Allen & Son Limited,

  390 Steelcase Road East,

  Markham, Ontario L3R 1G2 Canada

  www.thomasallen.ca

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of

  The Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program.

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which

  last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

  We acknowledge the Government of Ontario through the Ontario

  Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative.

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada

  through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

  11 12 13 14 15 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Text Printed on a 100% PCW recycled stock

  To all those who wore wings in the Allied cause in two World

  Wars, and to those who still wear them in the cause of freedom

  For he had that courage which Napoleon once said was the rarest—the courage of the early morning.

  —Montreal Gazette

  Billy Bishop was a man absolutely without fear. I think he’s the only man I have ever met who was incapable of fear.

  —Colonel Eddie Rickenbacker

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  ONE The Western Front, 1917

  TWO Cadet

  THREE Cavalryman

  FOUR Observer

  FIVE Pilot

  SIX 60 Squadron, Filescamp Farm

  SEVEN Ace

  EIGHT Bloody April

  NINE Bishop versus Richthofen

  TEN A Plan Is Hatched

  ELEVEN A Price on His Head

  TWELVE The Audace of It

  THIRTEEN The Game

  FOURTEEN The Best Machine in the World

  FIFTEEN Investiture

  SIXTEEN Uneasy Hero

  SEVENTEEN The Flying Foxes

  EIGHTEEN Petit Synthe

  NINETEEN St.Omer

  TWENTY The Twenties

  TWENTY-ONE My Father

  TWENTY-TWO Getting Ready

  TWENTY-THREE Call to the Colours

  TWENTY-FOUR Epilogue

  List of Victories

  Acknowledgements

  Without the help of the Royal Canadian Air Force this work would not have been possible. I will always be grateful to Air Marshal Hugh Campbell, Group Captain G. F. Jacobsen and Air Commodore Donald Blane for their assistance and co-operation.

  The help of Wing Commander Ralph Manning, the RCAF Air Historian, must be especially cited. Thanks also to his associates Arthur Heathcote, R.V. Dodds, H. A. Halliday and Archie Paton, and also to his predecessor Frederick Hitchins.

  A number of the surviving 1914–1918 fighter pilots assisted in various ways. My thanks to Lord Balfour, Keith Caldwell, Lord George Dundas, Spencer Horn, C.“Mike” McEwen, S.L.G.Pope, Alec Wilkinson and Graham Young.

  Two veterans of the trench warfare of the First World War, Colonel George A. Drew and Douglas Kittemaster, generously lent their assistance.

  The staff of the Air Historical Branch of the Air Ministry in London opened its doors wide to me. L. A. Jackets, head of the branch, and his assistant, W. H. Martin, were extremely helpful. They even provided me with an office as headquarters.

  I am also grateful to the staff of the Imperial War Museum and to F. S. White of the Air Ministry Library at Whitehall.

  Group Captain G. F. Hannifin of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, was most helpful in explaining the characteristics of the S.E. 5 aircraft on display there.

  Special thanks are due also to H. H. Russell, one of the foremost research experts on World War I aviation, who helped me in research when I was in London.

  At the Musée de L’Air in France, Rougedin Badille was kind enough to show me that prize collection of aircraft.

  Kenneth M. Molson, curator of the National Aviation Museum, Ottawa, was of particular help in suggesting many sources of information, including the Cross and Cockade Society of First War historians. My thanks to those of its four hundred members who so willingly proffered information of every description.

  I wish to thank Major C. C. J. Bond for preparation of the maps which appear on pages 71 and 197 of the text.

  Many of my close friends also assisted in this work. I am indebted in particular to Lord Shaugnessy whose keen socio-political insight is well known, and to a former business associate Frank deB.Walker, RCAF director of public relations overseas during World War II.

  To all these and to many others who helped in different ways, I wish to express my appreciation for their generous assistance, interest and support.

  WILLIAM ARTHUR BISHOP

  ONE

  THE

  WESTERN FRONT,

  1917

  ON THE MORNING of Friday, March 24, 1917, Lieutenant William Avery Bishop, formerly of the Mississauga Horse, latterly of the Seventh Canadian Mounted Rifles and now the newest reinforcement of the Sixtieth Air Squadron of the British Third Brigade, stood on the carpet before General John Higgins, the brigade commander. (The carpet was figurative: no such luxury existed in the battered farmhouse that served as headquarters of Filescamp aerodrome, fifteen miles behind the front lines at Arras.)

  It was fortunate for Bishop that he had so recently come to Filescamp that he did not yet know the airmen called this distinguished soldier �
�Old-Bum-and-Eyeglass”—because he had been shot in the former and wore the latter. Bishop, with his irrepressible small-town Canadian sense of humour, would not have been able to keep a straight face at a moment when his career hung in the balance.

  Bishop had lost no time in coming to the general’s attention. While Higgins and other visiting dignitaries watched, Bishop, returning from his first patrol over enemy lines, had crashed a new Nieuport scout practically at the general’s feet. The precious machine was wrecked, but Bishop walked away wearing a slightly embarrassed grin.

  General Higgins, a career soldier whose service in numerous campaigns, including the Boer war, had earned him the D.S.O. and a row of other ribbons, gave the blond-haired lieutenant with the penetrating blue eyes an admonishing glance. Then he peered gloomily through his monocle at Bishop’s undistinguished dossier. Bishop had been in uniform for five and a half years, ever since he entered Canada’s Royal Military College at the age of seventeen. He had been on active service almost from the day World War I started. But entries on the credit side of the dossier on the desk before General Higgins were few: he had suffered a slight shrapnel wound during a tour of duty as a Royal Flying Corps observer; he had achieved consistently high marks at target practice but had never fired a shot in action, except for a few exasperated bursts of machine-gun fire in the general direction of enemy trenches at extreme range. On the “crime” side, Bishop’s record contained more entries: a series of breach-of-discipline, conduct unbecoming-of-an-officer, encounters with authority and an unusual ability to get involved in mishaps and accidents.

  General Higgins closed the file and looked at Bishop.

  “How much solo time have you got, Bishop?”

  “Nearly twenty hours, Sir.”

  “Hmmm. You should have learned to fly in that time.”

  “There was an eddy, sir. A gust of wind swirled around a hangar and threw the plane out of control.”

  “I was on the field, Bishop.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “There was no wind.”

  “No, Sir.”

  “Afraid I’ll have to order you back to flying school.”

  It was a severe sentence. True, Bishop’s high spirits (he was barely twenty-three years old) had led him to treat the discipline of the British services with less than reverence. It was also true that he had not been able to master the niceties of flying an airplane, especially in the matter of taking off and landing. But he had worked hard to get his wings as a fighter pilot and to reach the front lines in France. He knew, as he stood before General Higgins, that additional training was unlikely to improve his flying ability, and that the general’s decree might end his career as a fighter pilot—before it had well begun.

  That noontime in the officers’ mess of Filescamp aerodrome, Bishop consoled himself with a few shots of cognac chased by champagne. His own gloom was in keeping with the atmosphere of the mess. The traditional cheerful chatter of men who faced death as a way of life was conspicuously absent from the other officers of 60 Squadron downing their drinks around Bishop. Their despondency had nothing to do with Bishop’s dismissal, which was indeed a trivial matter compared with the other misfortunes that beset 60 Squadron at that moment. The Squadron’s top fighter, Albert Ball, had been promoted to flight commander of another unit, and for weeks now 60 Squadron had been suffering severe losses to German fighter pilots. The most recent and tragic casualty was Evelyn Graves, the squadron commander, who had been shot down and killed behind enemy lines. The airplanes causing such havoc to 60 Squadron were a group of new Albatros fighters that formed a Jagdstaffel (hunting pack) based at Douai, about the same distance behind the German lines as Filescamp was behind the British trenches. The Albatros had little advantage in top speed over the Nieuport, the machine flown by the British pilots. But the Germans had two great advantages: the Albatros was equipped with two machine-guns, the Nieuport with one; and the German machines were piloted by experienced air fighters, whereas 60 Squadron’s casualties in the past few months had left it with only five experienced pilots.

  On the enemy side, the German Jagdstaffel II was manned by airmen of much greater experience, and led by the man who had shot down more planes than any other pilot to date: Baron Manfred von Richthofen. The Baron was a year older than Bishop, and strikingly similar physically—both were rugged, sturdy men, short and wiry. Like Bishop also, he was a cavalry man who had escaped the mud and misery of ground warfare by joining his country’s air force. Both had survived dangerous and inglorious apprenticeships as aerial observers before graduating to the more dangerous—and more glorious—role of fighter pilots.

  But there the parallel ended. By a grim coincidence as the clock in 60 Squadron’s officers’ mess was about to strike noon, twenty-five miles to the northeast and 5,500 feet above the shell-torn earth, Manfred von Richthofen was winning his thirtieth victory in the air. It was his first fight as a full lieutenant, and, on returning to base, in his usual meticulous manner he filed this report “Requesting acknowledgment of Victory”:

  Date: March 24, 1917.

  Time: 11.55 A.M.

  Place: Givenchy.

  Plane: Spad with Hispano motor. The first I have encountered.

  Occupant: Lieutenant R. P. Baker, 16th Squadron, RFC, wounded taken prisoner.

  I was flying with several of my gentlemen when I observed an enemy Squad passing on front. Aside from this Squad there were two new one-seaters which I had never seen in the air before, and they were extremely fast and handy. I attacked one of them and ascertained that my machine was better than his. After a long fight I managed to hit the adversary’s gasoline tank. His propeller stopped running. The plane had to go down.

  BARON MANFRED VON RICHTHOFEN

  Baker’s 16 Squadron was stationed at an aerodrome adjacent to Filescamp, but Bishop, nursing his brandy and brooding in the officers’ mess, knew nothing of Richthofen’s latest triumph. He knew only that his own career was at a new low point—and he knew he had no one to blame but himself.

  Into the 60 Squadron mess hobbled an airman whose jaunty manner and cheerful grin seemed to disperse the gloom. He was Major Jack Scott, the new squadron commander appointed to replace Evelyn Graves. Of all the occupants of the mess, Scott would seem to have the least cause for cheerfulness. It was remarkable that he could walk at all, even with the help of two canes. He had been crippled in a crash early in the war, and although he was under orders not to fly, he had no intention of accepting a role he described as “non-playing captain of the team.” So he simply disregarded the order and took his regular turn on patrols.

  Scott was a protégé of one of Britain’s most powerful elder statesmen, Lord Birkenhead, and a close friend of one of Britain’s most influential young statesmen, Winston Churchill. Both these friends had tried to persuade Scott to take an important headquarters job more suited to his physical handicap, but Scott had stubbornly refused.

  Scott now made his halting way to the bar beside Bishop and ordered a drink. “Sorry, Bish,” he said quietly. “However, I’ve persuaded the brass that we’re so shorthanded that you’d better stick around until your replacement arrives.”

  “How long should that take?” asked Bishop.

  “Couple of days, probably. So you can go on tomorrow’s patrol, anyway.”

  The next day, March 25, 1917, in a cloudless sky, four silver Nieuports climbed to nine thousand feet in diamond formation and crossed the German lines between Arras and St. Léger. The rear man was Bishop, who searched the sky warily; the tail man was always the most inviting target to an attacker.

  The patrol had been flying for about half an hour over the trenches when the leader spotted three small dots to the east. The specks grew larger and larger until the Nieuport pilots could identify the sweeping wings and bullet-shaped snout of Albatros fighters. To Bishop’s surprise his leader made no motion to turn away as the German fighters wheeled around behind the patrol. Instead he gradually slowed his speed to allow the
enemy machines to overtake them all the faster.

  Just as the Germans closed within firing range, a hundred yards behind, the Nieuport leader pulled to the left in a tight climbing turn. The patrol followed. Bishop was a split second slower than the rest. It cost him about fifty yards in distance. Suddenly an Albatros shot underneath him and pulled up under the leader’s tail. Bishop looked through his telescope-shaped Aldis sight and as the Albatros filled his field of vision he pressed the firing button.

  To his elation, the smoking tracer bullets streaked into the cockpit of the enemy machine and seemed to strike sparks all around it. Immediately the Albatros dived vertically. Bishop pushed down the nose of his own machine and gave chase.

  The Albatros dive might be a ruse. Grid Caldwell, a veteran fighter and the left flank man of the formation, had warned Bishop of the German tactic of diving away as if hit, only to escape by levelling off near the ground. Sure enough, the enemy plane levelled out after diving a thousand feet. From forty yards away Bishop fired again. This time he saw his bullets strike all around the pilot. Once again the enemy machine dived towards the ground and once more Bishop chased after it.

  His speed indicator showed he was diving at two hundred miles an hour, but the enemy plane seemed to be diving even faster. Bishop continued firing in short bursts, when the fight ended suddenly as the German plane crashed nose first into a field.

  Elated by his first victory, Bishop pulled his Nieuport abruptly out of its dive. His engine coughed, sputtered; Bishop pumped the throttle desperately but the engine refused to work. Now he could hear the rattle of machine-gun bullets all around him—a signal that he was over enemy territory.

  Furious at his own carelessness, Bishop tried to reconcile himself to a forced landing behind the enemy lines. The pilot of a plane with a dead engine and a thousand feet of altitude has time for only a few seconds of thought. Bishop had to face the bitter fact that the best he could hope for was survival—and a billet in a German prison camp for the rest of the war. In the back of his mind were unpleasant stories he had heard of Allied airmen being shot by enemy infantry after surviving a forced landing. Even more imminent was the hazard of a bad landing on a rough field. Bishop put his plane into the shallowest angle of descent short of stalling. He peered over the side of his cockpit and was horrified to see that the field that was inexorably rising toward his wheels was covered with shell holes.