March 2016 AH 41ABOVE LEFT:
DAILY MAIL
; LEFT: ©WORLDPHOTOS/ALAMY; RIGHT: U.S. AIR FORCE
and individuality, jeopardiz-
ing the delicate equilibrium
within squadrons containing
many young and aggressive
egos and tempting pilots to
“up one’s score,” in contem-
porary parlance.
Bishop had won the Vic-
toria Cross in 1917 for a
lone attack on a German
airfield. Standard protocol
for awarding a VC required
eyewitnesses, but there were
none in Bishop’s case. There
was only his report, which he
later embellished in his auto-
biography, Winged Warfare,
described by the reviewer in
Philadelphia’s Evening Public
Ledger as “a happy, heedless,
heroic narrative.”
“I pointed my nose towards
\PMOZW]VLIVLWXMVMLÅZM
with my gun, scattering the
bullets all around the ma-
chines, and coming down to
ÅN\aNMM\QVLWQVO[Wº_ZW\M
Bishop. “I do not know how
many men I hit, or what dam-
age was done, except that one
man, at least, fell, and several
others ran to pick him up.
PMVKTMIZQVOWٺ\WWVM[QLM
I watched the fun. I had for-
gotten by this time, that they
would, of course, have
machine-guns on the aero-
drome, and as I was laughing
to myself, as they tore around
in every direction on the
ground, like people going
mad, or rabbits scurrying
about, I heard the old familiar
ZI\\TMWN\PMY]QKSÅZMZ[WVUMº
Many within the RFC
believed Bishop exaggerated
his number of victories. But
most skeptics kept their doubts
to themselves. It took an
American to air the suspicions
in print. In his war memoir,
Horses Don’t Fly, Colorado
cowboy turned RFC ace Fred
Libby wrote of Bishop’s VC
exploit: “God Almighty! Ex -
cuse me while I vomit. I have
JMMVQV\PQ[UIV¼[ÆaQVOKWZX[
for almost two years. We have
_IQ\MLW^MZ\PM0]V¼[IQZÅMTL
for him to come up and healways does, but it is not that
easy....This and other reports
by the same pilot are the only
ones in almost two years that
have ever upset me, because
all the RFC boys bend over
backwards in reporting their
victories. They never make
this kind of claim, where there
Q[VWKPIVKM\WKWVÅZUº
Libby wasn’t the only U.S.
ace in British uniform who re -
garded Bishop with distaste.
Bogart Rogers, who joined
No. 32 Squadron in April
1918, discussed the Canadian
in a June 23 letter to his girl-
friend: “The articles in the
‘Post’ by Billy Bishop that
you’ve been reading aren’t
bad but he has painted them
up considerably and sort of
clouded up his popularity out
here by writing them. There’s
no doubt that he’s one of the
best pilots that ever climbed
into a machine, but writing all
about it and telling how I did
this and I did that isn’t consid-
ered too good form out here.”
Bishop was an exception
to the rule within the Royal
Air Force (as the RFC was re -
named on April 1, 1918). The
British government may have
encouraged the press to turn
its aces into stars, but most
pilots railed against the idea. It
was anathema to the nationalcharacter, especially pilots
who had been privately edu-
cated, where boys were ex -
pected to submit to the school
ethos of Edwardian England:
that it was the team, not the
individual, which mattered.
It was an ethos that the
Americans who served in the
RFC/RAF readily espoused.
In a letter to his mother in
Sep tember 1918, Elliot White
Springs admonished her for
what he saw as a crass ques-
tion about aces. “We don’t
have ‘aces’ here,” he wrote.
“This ‘ace’ stuff makes me
\QZML+ITTQ\Wٺ_I[PQ\W]\
with the French and Franco-
Americans it’s different—
decidedly different. I don’t
pre tend to know their systembut just wait and see which
system wins out. I’ll admit
they have good press agents
but I’m glad we are [not] bur-
dened with them. Those press
IOMV\[_QXMW]\\PM0]VÆaQVO
corps every week.” Springs,
by then an ace himself, having
shot down 10 enemy planes,
told his mother what mattered
in the RAF: “If I get any more
Huns than [the other] men
QVUaÆQOP\Q\¼[JMKI][M1¼U
a better shot. If they don’t get
Huns it’s because I’m a bad
leader as much as anything
else. My job is not to get Huns
Ua[MTNJ]\\WTMILUaÆQOP\\W
the detriment of the Hun.”
Or as Alvin Callender,
an other U.S. pilot in No. 32
Squad ron, put it in a letter to
his sister in 1918: “Quit telling
me to be an ‘ace’ because we
don’t have those kind of things
in the British Army, except
four in each pack of cards.” Gavin Mortimer’s most recent
book is The First Eagles: The
Fearless American Aces Who
Flew with the RAF in World
War I, which is recommended
for further reading.MANY WITHIN
THE RFC BELIEVED
BILLY BISHOP
EXAGGERATED
HIS NUMBER OF
VICTORIES.
american ace Elliott
White Springs (center)
shared the attitude of
his RAF squadron mates.