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I have been reading the various posts on the Willie Fry/Bishop affair and if I may I would like to make a few comments. Firstly I abhor the terms ‘anti-Bishop’ and ‘Bishop detractors’. Speaking for myself, I have no wish to be known as an ‘anti’ or a ‘detractor’.Bishop was a boyhood hero of mine, as he was to many other people.** As an historian of somewhat mature years, I am now interested in trying to understand events in history, using what evidence is available – contemporary, if possible, and certainly primary sources in the main. As with any other controversy, the Bishop question has become bogged down with minutia and many basic questions have become obscured in the process. The basic points in dispute are the aerodrome raid and the victory score. Actually there are many strange aspects to the Bishop story which have been overlooked and I’d like to go into these later.
The aerodrome raid. So far no record of this raid, or the casualties from it, has been discovered. It therefore becomes B’s word against that of the German records. It has been argued that these are not necessary complete. Fine. This is a point of view that cannot be ignored, but a disinterested observer could argue that it seems strange that both B’s claim to have attacked an aerodrome, and his combat claims, have** been unverifiable because of lost records. But let’s leave that for a moment. The hard inescapable fact remains that B was awarded the VC for an action which was not witnessed by any other. As far as I am aware, this is the only time an unwitnessed act has resulted in aVC being awarded and, in fact, goes directly against the conditions laid down for the award to be given for a single act of courage. Why were these conditions ignored in B’s case. Nobody has addressed this question.
The B victory score.** If Messrs McCaffery, Stewart Taylor and Dennis Hylands have come up with some matches, then it would be interesting to see their reasonings and conclusions.** I’m afraid that I have not heard of Mr McCaffery, his is certainly not a name which is familiar in the international research community as far as I am aware. Stewart Taylor is a fine resercher, but as far as I know his main concentration is on Canadian questions and I’m not aware that he has extensive German records. Dennis Hylands has done very little research in recent years, by his own admission and, again, is not known as a German ‘expert’ as I’m sure he would admit. On the other hand, the late Ed Ferko devoted most of his adult life to the study of the GAS and had an enormous amount of German material, which is now in the University of Texas. Ed carried out an intensive study of the B victory claims in 1986. He used the Verlustliste der Deutschen Luftstreitkrafte** im Weltkriege ; the records of Kofl 2 Kofl 4 and Kofl 6; the unit histories of German jasta operating on the same area of the Front as 60 and 85 sqdns at the time in question. At the conclusion of his research Ferko commented ‘It is not a pretty picture. This researcher has checked every possible German book, letter or record in his hands, looking for information relating to B’s claims - information either pro or con – nothing has been withheld which might confirm or deny any of B’s victories’. Ferko had failed to match a single claim made by B against a known German loss for any day, time and place in question. This is remarkable in itself – that there were no ‘possibles’ or ‘could have beens’.
As I have said, these are the basic points surrounding the B case. But I think there are other questions which need to be answered which I would like to address in part 2.** **
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