Mr William Bishop

William Bishop

Canadian pilots racked up an impressive record during World War I, but none was as prolific as William Bishop, who scored an amazing 72 aerial victories. Bishop began the war as a cavalryman, but soon grew tired of the mud and misery of trench warfare and transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. He went on to down a German plane in his very first dogfight in March 1917, and was designated an “ace” pilot after he bagged five targets in his first few days on the job. As his kills continued to pile up, German pilots dubbed Bishop “Hell’s Handmaiden.” While not an expert at aerial acrobatics, Bishop possessed uncanny positional awareness and an eye for marksmanship. To hone his skills, he often dropped tin cans from his cockpit and used them for target practice as he dove to earth. Bishop preferred flying alone, and gained a reputation for his larger-than-life feats of courage. In one famous June 1917 solo attack on a German aerodrome, he supposedly destroyed three enemy planes in the air and several more on the ground. Worried his reckless style would get him killed and affect morale on the home front, Bishop’s superiors eventually removed him from combat duty in June 1918.