Bishop and his areodrome attack

[Shooter]

I hear you, Vig, and I respect your opinion. Note that I do not say I agree with you necessarily. To be honest, I have no opinion in the matter of Bishop's honesty. Like the boys around here like to say: "I ain't got no dog in this fight."

But we now come to the essence of the argument. Two kinds of folks seem to cast Billy's rep in disrepute. Those who begin the debate believing he ain't real and seek out evidence to reinforce that opinion, and those who seek to find all sources of data and let the chips fall where they may,

No offense, Vigilent, by I count you in the former category. If I am wrong, than I stand corrected and let us move on, but your Frank Luke arguments sound remarkably similar to these. And you then leaned very heavily on another "Fry" (Royal Frye, wasn't it?) opinion, and one that Steven and Billy Haiber both opposed for different reasons.

As for Wing Commander Fry, if memory of him serves, he has not been ashamed of controversial positions in the past. His opinion would be decisive if it were the only one, or even if it were the most informed to come from that time. Sadly, neither seems to be true.

So in effect, you and Al are still tied. The game is in extra innings and neither of you guys have really made enough of a dent in the term "reasonable doubt" to bring a conclusion into sight.


Shooter sends

[Vigilant]

I think you've got me mixed up with someone else, Shooter. I have never said anything (IIRC) about Frank Luke and I have no idea who Royal Frye is. I do not count myself in the anti-Bishop camp. I only spent an entire day reading the old thread (I'm on holiday before you ask!) and having read so many other folks' opinions I naturally felt the need to inflict mine on everyone else.

I'm surprised at you saying Wing Co. Fry's opinion is not informed: he flew the same machine as Bishop; he was his deputy flight commander; they shared a hut together; he knew the man intimately; he saw the bullet holes in his machine. For these reasons, I see him as a fairly big chip falling in a particular direction.

Anyway let's not fall out over this.

Vig.

[Shooter]

And as I promised, I do apologize...I obviously have confused you with another. Particularly about Luke, where I do have an opinion. I was mistaken.

As for Wing Commander Fry, I never said that his opinions were not informed, just controversial in some circles. Oh, I also said that his were not the only ones, even if they were the most authoritative. And the chip that fell could well be the one that had been on his shoulder. I seem to recall an amount of personal bias in his statements that must shade his objectivity (I suspect that he did not particularly like Bishop, so one could well ask did his opinion cause his dislike, or did his dislike cause his opinion).

In any case, your statement about his opinion being better than mine (or yours) is absolutely correct. He was there...I was not.

Lastly, as I said before I am not tremendously involved in the Billy Bishop issue. I took up this matter only from a POV of a disinterested observer who has been hearing this gas being passed for four years now.

And this is so insignificant as to not even be a speed bump in our relationship. I have always regarded you as a friend, in as much as we can be separated by an ocean.


Shooter sends

[Zif]

*scratches head* *I dunno. *As compared with what?


Shooter sends

I meant all that argumentation around Bishop "faked" attack.
Just my opinion, but arguing so much about the attack, with all the "supposed" action that he did is too incredible to be all true, and anyway far from reality.

Ehrr... I'm not going to restart that old discussion

bye !

[Vigilant]

I would certainly agree the version of events I gave is remarkable (rather than incredible), but it does tally with all the evidence that has been brought to light.

By contrast, it seems to me Bishop's supporters still have to explain why so many of his peers thought he was not credible (and why we should discount them), why the German records positively dismiss the raid (rather than merely being silent), how the bullet groupings in his plane were within a circumference of 6 inches, and how (and why) he unshipped his Lewis Gun in flight and threw it away.

I know this reads like a "grassy knoll" comspiracy, but honestly it's a rum do! The truth is out there.

Vig.

[Barrett]

"A rum do." What a smashing expression!
I'm going to use it even when BB isn't mentioned.

[Craig]

While i have participated in pretty heated debate on this subject in the past, I am glad to see that the tone is a little more even this time'round.

While I 'got over it', and realized that I was wrong to be so annoyed at a certain pro-Bishop participant's very nearly child-like faith in the man, there does seem to be way too much "taking his word for it". This was a VC, for crying out loud! It wasn't distributed indisriminately like some Soviet medal, it took a lot to get one. How many were awarded in TGW? And under what guidelines, regarding witnesses, etc? And Bishop's was given very nearly at his word alone. Couple this with the lack of corroberating evidence, and whaddya get?

I do wonder about that gun. But, I find the notion that he parked his plane and shot it to be a bit beyong the pale. though he COULD have had a pistol....

In a nutshell, here's my view: you gotta prove he did it, not that he didn't.

[Ginger.]

Barrett,
the phrase can also be used to describe a dodgy character, for example:-
"That Billy Bishop? Aye lad he were a rum 'un."

Look guy's
The last thing I want to get rubber stamped with is " Bishop believer "...or " Bishop defender "....I'm not too sure why I keep lining myself up for that title . Maybe it's just because , it's just my natural instinct to defend the underdog ?. I know that if every post in this thread was saying Bishop was a great hero of the air war , then I would be posting vastly different messages to what I'm posting right now .
But I just wanted to point out that Bishop never awarded himself the V.C. . No matter what perceived influence he had on his Commander , in the end , any fault of Bishop wearing Britains highest bravery award must lay with the process . By going away from the traditional criteria for the award , the powers that be created this controversy . I think it's fun and also interesting to try to piece together facts and opinions that happened so long ago . That after all is what historians do . But if they don't then admit at the end of their arguement that some , or indeed all of there statements may well not be how it actually happened . Then they do a dis-service to themselves and also to history .
Well....I hope CEF182 is still watching ...next time someone new arrives at the forum and asks about Bishop , he will groan like the rest of us do ..heh heh .
And were is Al Lowe ???. if he would just turn up and champion Bishop , then I could go back to being a Bishop sceptic myself .
Very interesting posts so far though guy's , and thanks for that information about Bishop wearing the 1915 Star without justification !. That does indicate a pattern , but ofcourse is by no means conclusive .
Phil ( not a BB fan )

For some reason I just got to throw my 2c in again...

It is highly, unusually, unique how Bishop got the VC(in apparent absence of even 1 witness). We must assume someone really screwed up or there are some witness documentation missing. A VC just does not get handed to a colonial of all people,(no matter the politics) without witnesses. Hell, the RFC, shortly before this(like 4months??) barely even made a fuss about victory scores.

Bishop was being considered for a big Gong even before this action for prior deeds. Yes, the word "VC" was getting tossed around.

You get pissed off Canadians, mouth off over-aggressively on this because though we are used to our own countrymen slamming or ignoring our war heros, when it is non-Canadians it can get the hackles up even worse.

Hey Bishop might deserve this kind of "attention", it was no secret he was pining pretty bad for a piece of Crimean bronze. Bishop's score by proxy is put into question. Every country has it's glory hounds, why IS Rickenbaker's claims not under the same scrutiny on this forum?? Jeez, he launched a political campaign for his crowning glory. At least Bishop left it up to his superiors.

Even worse, certain members seem to leap-frog from Bishop to Collishaw to even Barker or Atkey/Gass in the same thread. Bring up Barker or Collishaw or do a search and if the thread is long enough you find a post about Bishop or "over-claiming Canadians!