The Bad Boy of the Week
Billy Bishop
"Better to die voluntarily crashing than to have the enemy send you down in flames."
Dogfighting just isn't what it used to be. Sure, there's something to be said
for doing barrel rolls, screaming through the atmosphere at Mach Five Million,
flipping on the afterburners and taking it right into the danger zone, but at the end
of the day, most modern fighter pilots are really just launching missiles at the
green dots on the screen. Back in the days of the Great War, when fighter planes
were little more than flying metallic deathtraps with large-calibre machine
guns strapped to them, dogfighting was an up close and personal affair. I mean,
taking down an airplane from a range of only a couple hundred feet with nothing
more than a few hundred bullets isn't exactly like stealing candy from babies or
shooting someone in the face with a blowtorch. You need to have the lightningquick reactions of a cat that accidentally got into a stash of coffee, the ability to
accurately use the iron sights of a .303-caliber machine gun from a standing
position while also deftly manoeuvring a rickety, barely-airworthy flying
contraption so that you evade enemy bullets and don’t crash face-first into a
mountain, and, quite honestly, you need more luck than a lottery-winning
leprechaun with a rabbit's foot for a keychain and a horseshoe lodged where the
sun don’t shine. Canadian fighter ace Billy Bishop possessed all of these talents
as he blazed through the skies of Western Europe like a demonic bat from the
deepest recesses of Hell, turning the most capable and daring pilots of the
German empire into giant flaming balls of death.
Bishop was born in Ontario in 1894 and spent a brief stint at the Royal
Military College before dropping out to join the Canadian Corps of the British
Army at the onset of The Great War in Europe. He enlisted in the cavalry,
dreaming about leading insane, thundering charges on enemy positions and
hacking up cowering kraut infantrymen with a badass gleaming sabre, but
unfortunately for Billy even the most incompetent military commander knew that
sending a cavalry charge against a half-dozen machine gun nests was stupider
than sticking your tongue in an overloaded power outlet. As a result, most of the
Allied mounted units spent their first months on the Western Front sleeping in
ankle-deep mud and shovelling horse manure several hundred miles away from
anything even remotely resembling actual combat. Billy decided that he was sick
of sitting around when he could be blasting Huns out of the sky from the cockpit
of a badass fighter plane, so even though he had never piloted an airplane in his
entire life he requested to be transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. He was put
through several months of intense training, received his aviation wings, and was
promptly hurled into action in March of 1917.
Flying a biplane in World War I was roughly about as dangerous as putting
together a suit of armour made from raw meat and flying down a Slip 'n Slide
coated with barbecue sauce into a swimming pool full of hammerhead sharks and
starving piranhas. The average lifespan for a new pilot in the Arras sector of
Northern France - the area Bishop was initially stationed - was 11 days, a stat
that put most rookies somewhere between fruit flies and unrefrigerated chicken
meat on the life expectancy scale. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to
know that these are not good odds. As if this wasn't bad enough, it should
mentioned that during this time his squadron was squaring off against the
notorious Jasta 11 - Germany's most elite squadron, personally commanded by
The Red Baron himself. Bishop didn't care though, and on March 25 he recorded
his first kill, shooting down a German fighter plane that was being a real pain-inthe-you-know-where and messing with him for no reason at all. By April 8, only
two weeks into his service, Billy had already added five flaming Germanspeaking infernos to his Buttkicking Log, scoring the magic number that
officially bestowed Bishop with the prestigious title of Fighter Ace. He spent the
rest of April careening through enemy skies blasting anything that moved and
dogfighting with some of the most dangerous pilots in all of Germany.
Anyways, during that month he shot down an additional 12 enemy aircraft,
bringing his kill total up to 17. This is pretty darned impressive, especially
considering that he was lucky just to have merely survived his encounter with
Richtofen's boys - by the end of April, 20 of the 25 planes assigned to Bishop's
squadron had been destroyed .
Despite his incredible success, by all accounts Billy Bishop was actually a
pretty mediocre pilot. He didn't have a great deal of skill in the air, but he did
have the natural instincts of a combat aviator, he was a crack shot with the
machine gun, and he was utterly fearless all of the time. He always tore into
combat at full speed, loved being in the thick of the action, and never thought
twice about slamming into barf-inducing rolls and nose-dives to try and
outmanoeuvre his enemies. He utilized surprise and altitude to his advantage,
preferring to swoop down through the cloud cover like a pissed-off hawk getting
ready to peck the eyes out of a small rodent and shoot enemy pilots in the face
when they were least expecting it. He always volunteered for the most dangerous
missions available, and eventually was given free reign by his commanding
officer to fly solo search-and-destroy missions deep into enemy airspace. His
maverick missions soon earned him the nickname "The Lone Wolf", which is
probably one of the top five most badass nicknames a human being can have!
Bishop's most notable achievement came in June 1917, while he was flying
one of his Lone Wolf missions against a heavily-defended airfield deep behind
enemy lines. Bishop saw several planes on the tarmac, so he swept down and
strafed the field, gunning down a couple of mechanics and damaging a bunch of
expensive equipment. Several enemy fighters scrambled to face Bishop but he
was able to hit two immediately after they got off the ground sending them
plummeting back to Earth like a couple of sacks full of bricks. He then killed
two more in straight-up air-to-air combat.
Despite the fact that his plane was severely damaged by ground fire and
another group of fighters was sent in to pursue him, he managed to get back
home safely and glide his broken-down, beat-to-a-pulp plane back onto the
runway. For shooting down four Germans in the span of about five minutes,
Bishop became the first Canadian pilot to win the Victoria Cross - the British
empire's highest award for bravery in combat.
Captain Bishop was recalled from the front for almost a year following this
event, but eventually was placed in charge of "The Flying Foxes" squadron in
June of 1918, where he personally led a unit of hand-picked, elite Canadian pilots
against the Germans. Unfortunately, High Command decided that if The Lone
Wolf were to be shot down it would be a massive blow to the entire British
empire’s morale, so in June 1918 he received word that that morning's mission
would be his final combat operation of the war. Instead of being relieved that he
could stop having angry Germans in airplanes shoot machine guns at him all day
long, Bishop got really ticked off that he wasn't going to have the opportunity to
blow up anymore enemy planes.
In his final mission, Bishop went solo into a group of three enemy fighters,
firing his guns like Tony Montana at the end of Scarface, swearing profusely and
giving everyone impolite hand gestures. He killed one German pilot on his
initial pass, and then pulled up hard through the cloud cover. The two remaining
enemy fighters tried to chase after him, but they got crossed up in the clouds and
smashed into each other like dummies. Bishop quickly dove back through the
clouds towards another flight group that was moving towards his position and
opened up with his guns once again. Two more planes were sent careening
towards the ground. The surviving Germans decided, "forget this, I'm out of
here", and took off. Bishop had notched five kills in the span of fifteen minutes
and survived to tell the tale.
Billy Bishop had claimed 72 air victories in only six months of active combat
duty, making him the British empire's highest-scoring fighter ace during World
War I. When he returned from the front was hailed as a hero in Canada and
Britain, receiving dozens of medals from numerous Allied nations. In the years
following the war he served as a Canadian Air Marshal and flight instructor,
training the next generation of Canadian fighter pilots - men who would go on to
prove their worth by helping the Allies win the Battle of Britain and forever keep
the Nazis out of England.
"You have no idea of how bloodthirsty I've become and how much pleasure I get in killing Huns"