THE 100-POUND TERROR OF THE AIR
WHEN he registered at a New York hotel the clerk looked him over with a supercilious eye. He was a trifle undersized, to be sure, and youngish—twenty-two and weighing only one hundred pounds. And the name, W. A. Bishop, hastily scrawled on the register, meant nothing to the clerk—probably some college stripling in town to give Broadway the once-over. But a little later the same clerk looked at that name on the hotel roster with a sensation as nearly approaching awe as a New York hotel clerk is capable of feeling; for he had learned that the diminutive guest was the world-famous Maj. William Avery Bishop, of the British Royal Flying Corps, who in three months won every decoration Great Britain has created to pin upon the breasts of her gallant fighters.
Mars is a grim god and an exacting master, but he sometimes “smoothes his wrinkled front” at the blandishments of the little god of Love. And it was so in the case of Major Bishop when the gallant knight of the air checked the war-god in the hotel coat room and slipped away with Dan Cupid to Toronto, where his sweetheart was waiting to welcome him. They are to be married before he returns to the front.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reckons Bishop as the greatest air fighter since Guynemer. It says of his exploits:
So far as is known, Major Bishop is the only living man who has a right to wear not only the Military Medal but the Order of Distinguished Service, and not only that, but the Victoria Cross. Yet he is only twenty-two years old, and he blushed and stammered like a schoolboy when he tried to explain something about air fighting at a Canadian club dinner in New York. However, here is his record as piled up in five months at the front:
One hundred and ten single combats with German fliers.
Forty-seven Hun airplanes sent crashing to the earth.
Twenty-three other planes sent down, but under conditions which made it impossible to know certainly that they and their pilots had been destroyed.
Thrilling escapes without number, including one fall of 4,000 feet with his machine in flames.
The most daredevil feat of the war—an attack single-handed on a Boche airdrome, in which he destroyed three enemy machines.
These feats not only won medals for the hero, but rapid promotion. With his appointment as Major, he was also named chief instructor of aerial gunnery—which is his chief hobby—and commander of an airplane squadron.
Bishop went to Europe from his home in Owen Sound, a little Ontario town, where his father is County Registrar, in the spring of 1915 as a cavalry private. Cavalrymen have an easy time these days waiting for the trench warfare to end and the coming of the open fighting, when they can get at the Hun. Bishop didn’t want to wait, so he was transferred to the flying corps. He made no particular impression on these officers, but finally got a place as observer in the spring of 1916. His machine was shot down presently, and when he came out of hospital he was given three months’ leave, most of which he spent at home.
When he went back last fall he tried again, and this time succeeded in qualifying as a pilot. He spent the early winter training in England, and finally reached the front in February. Then things began to happen.
His first enemy plane was brought down within a few days, under circumstances which have not been told, but which were enough to win the Military Medal. By Easter his record was such that he was made flight commander and captain. He celebrated by attacking three German planes single-handed. Four others came to their rescue. He got two; then out of ammunition, he went home. This brought him the D. S. O.
Bishop won the Victoria Cross in a sensational air battle. Here is the official account as given in The Post-Dispatch:
“Captain Bishop flew first to an enemy airdrome. Finding no enemy machine about, he flew to another about three miles distant and about twelve miles within enemy lines. Seven machines, some with their engines running, were on the ground. He attacked these from a height of fifty feet, killing one of the mechanics.
“One of the machines got off the ground, but Captain Bishop, at a height of sixty feet, fired fifteen rounds into it at close range. A second machine got off the ground, into which he fired thirty rounds at 150 yards. It fell into a tree. Two more machines rose from the airdrome, one of which he engaged at a height of 1,000 feet, sending it crashing to the ground. He then emptied a whole drum of cartridges into the fourth hostile machine and flew back to the station.
“Four hostile scouts were 1,000 feet above him for a mile during his return journey, but they would not attack. His machine gun was badly shot about by machine gun fire from the ground.”
Apparently the official reporter was not interested in the Captain’s condition. The damaged machine gun accounts for his strategic retreat, which satisfies officialdom. On Bishop’s behalf, it should be remembered that an aviator lives very close to his machine gun during a fracas—if he lives.
Anyhow, Bishop got the V. C. for this before-breakfast excursion. When he was given a furlough, a few weeks ago, it was suggested that he stop at Buckingham Palace on his way home. There a rather small man with a light beard and a crown pinned the three medals on the breast of the Canadian.
Major Bishop himself is inclined to complain a little at the tools with which he has to work. His faith in incendiary bullets has been shattered, for instance.
“You want to bring the Hun down in flames if you can,” he explained. “That is the nicest way. But you can’t be sure of doing that. I shot six incendiary bullets into one fellow’s petrol tank one day, and the thing wouldn’t blow up.”
Good shooting is what does the trick, he says, and plenty of it.
“Don’t trust to one bullet to kill a Hun. Get him in the head if you can, or at least in the upper part of the body. But get him several times—one bullet is never sure to kill one. Get hunks of them into him; into his head. That does it. The greatest thing to teach the new man is how to shoot.”
Sounds rather bloodthirsty, but this 100-pound fighter knows his enemy and of what he is capable. While Bishop finds bombing quite interesting, he prefers dueling, which he says is still seeking higher altitudes; in fact, when one is flying above 22,000 feet he is never sure that he will not be attacked from above. The unexpected appeals to Bishop, who cites the following as an enjoyable occasion:
“I was about 10,000 feet up, going through a cloud bank, without a thing in my mind but to get back six or seven miles behind the Hun lines and see what was going on, when I heard the rattle of machine guns. I looked back and there were three Huns coming straight for me. We all started firing at about 300 yards. I gave all I had to one fellow and he came to within about ten yards of me before swerving. He went by in flames. I turned on the second and he fell, landing only about 100 yards from the first one, which shows how fast we were going.
“I was excited, and the third machine escaped,” he added apologetically.
An attack, two duels, and two victories while the planes were traveling less than a quarter of a mile, at over 100 miles an hour! Time, perhaps ten seconds.
It was Bishop, according to reports, who invented the plan of diving down and shooting the Germans from behind during an attack. He did not discuss the origin of the idea, but denied that it did much damage. Oh, yes, an occasional machine gun nest, but, then, there are only a few men in these. The real effect was moral. It distracts the Hun to be shot in the back. Also it greatly encourages the infantry who are charging.
“They cheer like mad,” he grinned. “They think we are killing thousands of Huns.”
Traditions gather thick around such a man. Tommy has no demigods in his religion, but he does the best he can with his heroes. So Tommy says that Bishop brought down nine machines in a two-hour fight one day. But Tommy’s best story of him is given to illustrate the nerve which enjoys being called on to fight for life on a split second’s notice.
A Hun flier had used an incendiary bullet on Bishop’s petrol tank that did work, Tommy reports. The battle had been at a low altitude, about two miles up. Bishop’s plane flamed up, and he fell. He was on the point of jumping and had loosed the straps that held him into the fuselage. Airmen dislike being burned to death. But he decided to make a try for life at the risk of this, and after he had fallen 4,000 feet or so took the levers again and pulled up the nose of the plane, straightening her out. Of course, his engine was out, so he began to tail dive, and went a few more thousand feet that way. Then he succeeded in straightening her out once more, but side-slipped, and finally banked just as he struck. One wing of his flaming machine hit first and broke the fall. The loosened straps let him jump clear. He was just behind the British lines, and Tommy rushed up and gathered him in and extinguished the fire in his blazing clothing.
He was not hurt.