"Bishop's airfield raid" Topic

As the header on TMP shows today is the anniversary of Billy Bishops lone raid on a German airfield. Due to the controversy ths has generated I was surprised no one mentioned it yet.

So, what do you think? Did it really happen or did Bishop make it all up?

What do the German records show?

It really happened, and he had many enemies and envious rivals. He was a donkey's anus, and he exaggerated.

The raid occurred at a temporary field as a German squadron was in transit to a new location. Bishop exaggerated the results, whether intentionally or out of hubris, who can say? I think hubris, because he really was a crack shot. But of course he didn't have time to stick around and "confirm" his own asserted results.

He was a "media hound" by then, so his story was greatly appreciated by the high brass to bolster morale at a particularly needful time (Bloody April was very recent history, after all).

All trash talk about him stopping and shooting up his own tail, and making the entire thing up, is inexcusable….

German records say that no occupied airfield existed in the location that Bishop says he went to. Missing aircraft and pilots, are not matching up to anything Bishop said happened.

But records are problematic, since it has been shown that even German records, the best kept in the War, are incomplete. They are just better than anything kept on the Allied side by comparison….

For contrary opinions this link gives a short paper by Alex Revell. As for what happened, read both sides (the link brings you to a pro Bishop site that gives you both sides) think things over and make up your mind. One of the joys of history!

billybishop.net/bishopP.html

Yes, it is. And that is why I believe what I wrote. There is truth on both sides of this one too. Bishop the braggart, the exaggerator and the unlikeable popularity seeker, does not cancel out Bishop the crack shot killer. A minute examination of his "kill" score can be equally applied to any fighter pilot or gunner's claims. The Allies look quite poor compared to the Germans when comparing criteria for an official "kill". Bishop's score compares favorably to other Allied pilots' official scores when the actual evidence for them is researched; or so I have read….

This topic comes up most years with that header. One of the earlier threads:
TMP link

My reply then:

Philip Markham had a very thoroughly researched article in Over The Front, Vol.10, No.3, 1995 The author had set out with an admitted bias in favour of Bishop and wanted to find info to back up his claims.

Short summary of the research:
* German fields at Esnes and Awoigt were vacant that day.
* No German airield within Bishop's flight radius had Albatros D.I's or D.II's at that date, 2 Armee and 6 Armee fighters were all D.III's
* No German reports of any airfield attacks anywhere on the Western Front that day.

SPAMing your same post three years running. I guess that means that you consider this an open and shut case. Bishop fabricated the entire thing. Probably including shooting up his own aircraft and ditching the Lewis.

And "no German reports" fails to be a conclusive fact, since not everything got reported or survives to be researched….

Yes. It's an annual holiday.

The research that went into the article was quite thorough and persuasive. At this stage, an argument in defense of Bishop's claims would have to be backed by equally thoroughly researched counterpoints.

The German airfield records across the Western Front for that day have survived, and actively do not report attacks or loss of aircraft. Any claim that the German commanders did not report attacks on their airfields or loss of aircraft would have to be supported by evidence documenting such types of reporting failures.

I think Peter Kilduff's book of last year is the latest treatise on the subject:

link

From David Bashow's review of Kilduff – '… readers expecting to be rewarded with definitive closure to Bishop's controversial solo dawn attack on a German airfield on 2 June 1917 will be bitterly disappointed. Regrettably, there is no ‘smoking gun' here. That said, while not discounting Esnes as a possible location for the attack, the author does offer what is by his own admission a speculative alternative theory as to the target location of Bishop's attentions that early-June morning so long ago. Given all the aforementioned limitations with respect to Allied, and, even more so, German records, and the obvious passage of time with all that entails, this engagement appears to be eternally consigned to the scrap heap of unresolved mysteries. However, as Peter Kilduff points out, the Germans never did categorically deny that the raid occurred, nor for that matter did they categorically confirm it. That said, the fact that the First World War German Aces Association enthusiastically fêted Bishop and inducted him into their fraternity in Berlin in 1928, given their known respect for courage under fire, makes it highly unlikely that they would have welcomed a fraud into their midst. There seems to be little doubt, as Kilduff has offered, that the raid occurred. The question remains as to where it occurred. At any rate, this is all food for thought… '

So what is Kilduff's "speculative theory" of where "the raid" took place, if not the temporary field near Esnes?…

No reputable source has ever found one shred of evidence that the anything remotely like what was described ever occurred. Heck, they never found any evidence that ANYTHING occurred.

Further, no one has ever come up with ANY way to counter the powder burns found surrounding the bullet holes in his tail surfaces – the only "damage" suffered by his aircraft that day.

It made great reading in the war and in the twenties. But the event is pure poppycock.

One the other hand, William George Barker's career as well as his epic last fight, was well documented, seen by many and acknowledged by all.

Mark E. Horan

So we have an asserted "powder burns in the tail" story, by his fitter/mechanic, who recants or denies that he ever said such a thing?…

Alex Revell is a very respected WW1 aviation historian (his book "High over the Empty Blue" is a good example of the quality of his research).

B