Dear Sfabert and all,
I would just like to mention something concerning
Albert Ball, but I promise to bring this post around to Bishop as well...
It wasn't German tactics that downed Ball (while it WAS coming out of a cloud inverted and low to the ground); in fact, Ball was going 'great guns' up until the very last time he was seen. Again, 14 victories in 13 days, and possibly three more; but I digress...
At the time of Ball's demise, RFC fighter tactics DID leave something to be desired: 56 Sqn would take off together, go to a pre-determined point in enemy territory together, AND THEN SEPARATE, each going his own way, depending on what they saw there or, in Ball's case, where they found the best 'hunting'. A recipe for disaster? Yes, indeed; this is exactly what happened on 7 May 1917, when 56 took off en masse, separated, and was shot down in detail...
It is hard for me, based on what I've read and studied, to reconcile Bishop's "lone wolf" tactics with the realities of air warfare in 1918...
But here, as promised, is the Bishop-Ball connection: didn't Ball suggest to Bishop the idea of 'raiding the aerodrome at dawn'? Is this from Bishop's autobiography (which, I believe, Al Lowe has since refuted)? And didn't someone here at the Forum, about one year ago -- possibly Alex Revell? -- say that such a meeting between Ball and Bishop was whole cloth? These are only questions, NOT accusations; I would just like to get the stories and versions straight...
Now, if you'll pardon, a bird has just lit on the windowsill and I am compelled to investigate...
VBR,
Captain Lewis