40 AH march 2016
Air Heroes.” It thundered:
“What I want to know is why an Englishman whose hobby is
bringing down sky Huns in braces and trios between luncheon
and tea, who can already claim a bag of 30 enemy aircraft,
should have to wait and be killed before a grateful nation waiting
to acclaim him could even learn his name?
“I wonder if people in England realize that the German Air
Service is the most popular and feted branch of the Kaiser’s war
machine because German authorities have imagination enough
to exploit its personal side? How many people in these islands can
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The question struck a nerve. Rival newspapers joined the
campaign, and the British government soon saw the sense in
their argument. They removed the ban on naming aces, and in
its January 7 edition the Daily Mail trumpeted: “Our Wonderful
Airmen—Their Names at Last.”
The two airmen singled out for attention by the Mail were
Captains Philip Fullard and James McCudden, whose photo-
graphs accompanied the breathless prose. Fullard was just 20,
explained the Mail, “a fair, curly-haired, good-looking boy,
clear-eyed and fresh-complexioned, with regular features.” The
paper then described some of his gripping exploits: “He had a
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being shot away from his eyes. The Verey lights in his machine
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managed to get his burning machine back to the British lines.”
As for McCudden, continued the newspaper, “He has had
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taining a scratch. He had three duels with Immelmann, the
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t was just the sort of dash-
ing escapades that the
war-weary British public
craved, and the Ameri-
cans enjoyed them too as they
waited for their airmen to go
into action. On February 3,
1918, the New York Sun ran a
full-page feature in its maga-
zine titled “The New Code
Duello Is of the Upper Air.”
It referenced the fabled aces,
most of whom were now
dead. “What was Guynemer
but a d’Artagnan? Bishop—
the British Flying Corps—is
another Athos happily sur-
vived. Boelcke was a Teuton
De Wardes [d’Artagnan and
Athos were two of the Three
Musketeers, De Wardes one
of their respected adversar-
ies]. The fatal encounters high
above Flanders and Picardy
that have thrilled the world for
three years and more are sim-
ply the modern expression of
the ineradicable thirst of men
for personal combat.”
The Bishop lauded by the
Sun was Billy Bishop, a Cana-
dian with 47 victories. He
was in Canada in the winter
of 1917-18, sent home by the
British to lift his nation’s spir-
its. The gallant war hero mar-
ried a local girl and also found
time to write his memoirs.
Now that the RFC had suc-
cumbed to the cult of celeb-
rity, the top aces, including
Bishop and McCudden, wereencouraged to commit their
exploits to print.
McCudden was a reluctant
hero. A working-class man
who had risen through the
ranks, he loathed publicity
and in the days following the
Daily Mail’s article in January
1918 had written his sister ask-
ing her to disregard “all the
bosh in the paper.”
Bishop had no such con-
cerns. When he returned
to Britain in April, he was
promoted to major and ap -
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of the newly formed No. 85
Squadron. Bishop was given a
free hand to choose his pi lots,
and among those he selected
was a trio of untested Ameri-
cans: Larry Callahan, John
McGavock Grider and Elliot
White Springs. The lat ter re-
garded Bishop as a “wonder-
ful man,” adding in a letter
home that he was “considered
sort of a superhuman saint” by
the British public.
The opinion of Bishop’s fel-
low pilots was less charitable.
Many cited the Canadian’s
behavior as the reason why the
British had been right to resist
turning their top pilots into
stars: It encouraged vanitynames at last The January 7, 1918, Daily Mail publicized
British aces Philip Fullard (left) and reluctant hero McCudden.self-promoter Billy Bishop
was one of few British aces
to actively court publicity.