Billy Bishop expert DAVID BASHOW returns fire at the aviation legend's critics
By DAVID BASHOW
Thursday, April 18, 2002 – Page A15
In light of recent comments by Canadian historian Brereton Greenhous regarding his forthcoming book, The Making of Billy Bishop, I feel honour-bound, as a fellow historian and a fighter pilot, to offer my observations.
Mr. Greenhous contends that the June 2, 1917, solo dawn raid on a German airfield, for which Bishop was subsequently awarded the Victoria Cross, simply did not occur. Mr. Greenhous notes that he could not subsequently identify the airfield, nor was there any mention of the event in German records.
After years of extensive research into Bishop's story, I found two highly reputable and independent sources confirming that there was a flight from a transiting Jagdstaffel, or fighter squadron, at Esnes, France, that day. They were the third and final flight of Jagdstaffel 20, a rather lacklustre unit that was relocating from the French front to the Flanders front.
This corresponds with the location where Bishop said the event occurred in his official combat report. The raid probably did not appear in German records because the squadron was still en route to its new location, and by German rules, was not required to report. It would, in fact, have been unusual to keep records, according to their customs under these circumstances, except in the squadron's war diary, and this was lost to Allied bombing during the Second World War.