BISHOP AND RICHTHOFEN had met in the air before, but always in mêlées of ten or a dozen planes and they had exchanged only passing shots. Now each was fighting in his favourite way: Bishop alone, Richthofen surrounded by members of his hunting pack. On this day their scores stood: Richthofen 52 planes in eight months of combat; Bishop 12 planes in five weeks.
As Richthofen’s flight swept toward him, Bishop pulled back on the stick and climbed straight up. The Nieuport’s wings shuddered and the engine growled in protest. As the machine slowed almost to a stall Bishop pulled over on his back, then aimed his plane in a full-power dive at the Albatros fighters, firing wildly. The Nieuport plunged straight through the formation, then zoomed up and attacked from below. From one thousand feet above, Bishop dived again and repeated his upward zoom, firing without aiming. Three times he repeated the manoeuvre, and each time the German planes scattered. Finally Richthofen, frustrated by the darting attacks, signalled his flankers to break off and the red planes dived in different directions, too fast for pursuit.
Bishop turned his attention to the two-seaters which had so nearly led him into Richthofen’s trap. They were still visible, continuing their slow, unconcerned game of follow-the-leader. He approached them from the side, so that they must fly across his nose like cumbersome ships-of-the-line. The observers in the rear cockpits sighted the blue-nosed Nieuport and converged their fire on it. Bishop aimed at the observer of the middle plane and silenced his gun with a short burst that riddled the fuselage. He saw the machine turn on its side and fall away out of control. The German plane bringing up the rear dived steeply out of range. The leader of the trio simply disappeared. Bishop followed the wounded machine, which continued its spin until with a violent explosion it crashed into a farmhouse, “destroyed in the most satisfactory manner,” Bishop’s log reported.
The pursuit had brought Bishop to six thousand feet, farther to the south near Monchy-le-Preux, where the Richthofen formation had regrouped. Bishop sighted the red Albatros fighters again, attacking two British photographic reconnaissance planes. The outnumbered and outclassed two-seaters were putting up a stout resistance but they were being methodically peppered by the Richthofen planes.
With a slight advantage of height Bishop dived into the midst of the German formation, spraying a long burst of fire, then pulled up steeply as the Albatros scouts turned out of the path of his bullets. He stayed well above the German planes, content to harass them but without any intention of getting into close combat with such renowned fighters at odds of five to one. Several times he repeated his dive-and-zoom tactic. And once more Richthofen’s flight, unable to corner the annoying Nieuport, made their way towards Douai, where one by one they glided down and landed.
Bishop turned west toward the British lines. He had just crossed over when he came upon a pair of German two-seaters spotting for the artillery. He flew headlong at them, firing as he went.
One of the two-seaters broke off. The other fought back. He and Bishop came at each other at a combined speed of more than two hundred miles an hour. Bullets whipped by the Nieuport as Bishop saw his own bullets strike around the engine of the German machine. When only thirty yards separated the two planes the German pilot broke off, much to Bishop’s relief. Suddenly it dived steeply, smoke billowing out from the engine. The second machine, which had stayed out of the fight, dived after it.
It was now after eleven o’clock and the sun was high in a clear blue sky. Bishop had very little ammunition left, but he decided to cruise above the lines at a comfortable height of ten thousand feet in the hope of getting one last chance at an enemy plane before returning to the aerodrome. A lone two-seater Aviatik hove into view. Bishop pulled his Nieuport into a vertical dive, waited until he was twenty yards away, then opened fire. The observer returned the fire and a stream of bullets tore into the wing of the Nieuport.
On his second attack, Bishop pulled up underneath where the observer could not fire at him, then took careful aim at the Aviatik’s belly. The two-seater shook violently as Bishop fired from ten yards away, then nosed over. Bishop emptied the rest of his drum but without effect. The German pilot was able to level out his machine a hundred feet from the ground and land safely in a field near Lens at the foot of Vimy Ridge.
With no ammunition and little fuel left, Bishop flew cautiously among puffs of anti-aircraft fire and landed at Filescamp. In one patrol he had engaged thirteen German machines in nine separate combats.
“Comment I think is unnecessary,”Jack Scott added to the combat report, “except that Captain Bishop seemed to have destroyed one enemy aircraft and forced two others to land.”
No less a personage than General Trenchard arrived for lunch to deliver his congratulations in person. “He said some things I shall always treasure,” Bishop wrote to Margaret.
But he was less happy about his own performance. “I don’t know what was the matter with my shooting this morning,” he complained. “The Huns seemed to be continually diving away and escaping me.”
Over at Douai, Richthofen was equally glum. All morning he had been hounded by the irritating Nieuport with the blue spinner that had refused to come down and fight it out with his formation, and what’s more, had robbed him of a two-seater that was a sure kill. Richthofen was due to go on leave the next day, and he was eager to add to the spectacular score of victories he had amassed. The day before, April 29, he had shot down four planes. One of his victims was Capt. Frederick Barwell of 40 Squadron which operated from the same field as Bishop’s 60 Squadron, and used the identical improved Nieuports.
On the night of April 29 [Richthofen’s biography relates], he was busy celebrating with his father the great day that he had had in the air. Not only was 52 an unheard of number of victories at that time, but the downing of four enemy planes was a feat he had never achieved before. Since his brother Lothar had downed two, the brothers could say they had in one day wiped out one complete English flight.
Richthofen, Sr., joined in the big dinner and glowed with pride. At eight o’clock in the course of the dinner the baron was called to the extension telephone in the mess hall. He found himself in communication with the grand headquarters of the High Command, the Holy of Holies of the All Highest War Lord. The following message was read to him: “I heartily congratulate you on your marvellous success. The Fatherland looks with thankfulness upon this brave flyer. May God further preserve you. Wilhelm.”
Richthofen had vowed to equal that day’s score on his last day before going on leave. As Bishop took off from Filescamp for his second sortie, accompanied by Jack Scott, Richthofen with four other red Albatros planes left the ground at Douai. They met near Drocourt, east of Lens, at two o’clock—as if by appointment.
Scott and Bishop plunged into the middle of the five red planes. Richthofen and one of his flankers turned straight across the Nieuports and broke around behind them. Richthofen was the first to open fire.
A sharp burst from his twin Spandau guns raked Scott’s engine. Scott jerked his machine to the left and climbed out of the line of fire. At the same instant Bishop swerved to his right as Richthofen and his wing mate shot by above him. Then another Albatros flashed by in front of him, and another. He was surrounded by scarlet planes.
He pushed his stick forward as he saw Richthofen dive at a right angle toward him. Bishop was banked over on his side as a stream of bullets smashed into the fuselage behind his seat. One of them pierced a fold of his flying coat. “The best shooting I have ever seen,” he recalled later. He had no time for admiration now. He rolled his machine to the right as Richthofen sped by his nose, then pulled his Nieuport into a tight turn. Scott was nowhere to be seen but his own fate now occupied Bishop as bullets whipped around him. He twisted his machine to the left as once again Richthofen dived at him. He tried to get into position for a burst but Richthofen fired first. His bullets smashed the Nieuport’s instrument panel and oil drenched Bishop’s face.
For the first time in his fighting career Bishop lost his temper. Angrily he pulled back on the control stick and lurched upwards, shot straight up in the air, kicked the rudder bar, banked over and lunged down at Richthofen’s Albatros. At sixty yards he opened fire. The Albatros rolled over on its back, then headed for the ground.
High above now, Bishop saw three Nieuports coming to his rescue. The rest of the German formation fled, and Bishop was free to dive after Richthofen’s plane which was speeding down vertically, black smoke streaming from it. For one triumphant moment Bishop thought he had achieved the impossible: that the invincible Richthofen had fallen to his gun.
But it was Richthofen’s old ruse. After diving four thousand feet he flattened out, smoke ceased to pour from his motor’s exhausts, and he flew off eastward with a defiant waggle of his wings.
Bishop now searched the sky for Scott, with no success. In an unhappy frame of mind he crossed the lines, slowly descending. To his right he saw another plane flying toward him. He watched it cautiously, then he gave an involuntary shout of relief. It was Jack Scott’s familiar silver Nieuport. The two pilots flew side by side at wingtip distance, waving and grinning as they glided down for a landing. Scott had managed to coax his limping machine out of the battle without being followed by Richthofen’s men. He himself had narrowly escaped the baron’s bullets, but his engine was damaged and he was coaxing it to keep running when Bishop found him.
“The C.O. and I got mixed up with five really good Huns this afternoon,” Bishop described the encounter to Margaret. “We chased them away, but oh heavens did they shoot well. Seven bullets went through the back of my machine within six inches of me and one within an inch. I can only console myself with the thought that a miss is as good as a mile.”
It was a fitting end to “Bloody April.”
With Richthofen’s departure on extended leave—he would not make another combat flight until the middle of June—much of the fire went out of the German fighter pilots who confronted the British squadrons based at Filescamp. And perhaps because the opposition was less savage, Bishop and his companions felt a letdown too. In the air Bishop had to make a conscious effort to be as eager and alert as ever, but on the ground he was irritable and listless. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and he looked older than his twenty-three years. “Here it is—only two o’clock in the afternoon and I am dead tired already after only four hours flying,” he wrote Margaret.
There were good reasons for Bishop’s condition. It was just over forty days since he had first flown across enemy lines as a pilot, and in that time he had fought nearly forty battles. He had watched half a dozen men with whom he lived—with whom he had eaten breakfast the same day—shot down. He himself had destroyed fourteen planes and the men who flew them. He had played hard when he wasn’t fighting—few RFC pilots took more pride than Bishop in the Allied airman’s traditional ability to perform on a minimum of sleep and a maximum of social drinking.
There was another and less romantic reason for Bishop’s indisposition. Like other Nieuport pilots he suffered chronically from stomach upsets known as “the complaint”—the result of spending several hours a day in an atmosphere partly composed of castor oil fumes.
When rotary engines like the Le Rhône were first introduced it was discovered that petroleum oils were not suitable because the rotary design caused excessive dilution of oil by gasoline. Castor oil, however, proved to be almost insoluble in gasoline and for this reason it was used in the Le Rhône.
Jack Scott, who kept a paternal eye on his pilots, recognized the signs of nervous fatigue in Bishop and ordered him to take two weeks leave at the end of the first week of May.
That was all the tonic Bishop needed. That night he wrote to Margaret: “It will be wonderful to have the feeling that there is really a good chance of living for a few days.” He had five days of flying left before he went on leave, and he made a secret resolve to bring his score up to twenty before he left for England. On May 2 his flight escorted a covey of photo-reconnaissance planes into enemy territory without resistance.
It was not until they were on their way home that Bishop sighted what appeared to be the only German machine in the sky that day. With a wave of his arm he signalled Fry to take over the patrol, and dived to the attack. But the German pilot saw him in time to get out of range.
Bishop was climbing to rejoin the patrol when he saw five two-seater machines across the Drocourt-Quéant Switch. He turned in their direction and closed the gap without being observed. As usual the reconnaissance machines were flying in line. Bishop singled out the rear one and attacked from underneath in the “blind spot” where neither the pilot nor observer could see him. He was twenty yards away when he fired his first burst, and no more than five yards from the enemy when he pressed the button again. The second burst killed both the pilot and observer. The machine spun down with the engine full on and buried itself nose first in a field near Monchy-le-Preux.
As he climbed away he heard the rattle of machine-gun fire underneath him. Bullets ripped through the fabric of his wings. He banked steeply and saw that one of the two-seaters had manoeuvred into position to give its observer a good shot at him. Bishop tilted his Nieuport, got the gunner into his sights, and opened fire at twenty yards. His bullets struck the side of the German machine but missed the observer. Another burst struck the engine. The enemy plane plunged down, trailing smoke, but Bishop was forced to break off his attack as three Albatros scouts suddenly appeared above him. With his ammunition nearly spent, Bishop decided to be content with his two victories. With a quick half-roll onto his back he dived west with the throttle wide open, levelling off at reduced speed once he had crossed the lines, and twenty minutes later landed at Filescamp Farm.
His double kill banished his fatigue. Half an hour later with his plane refuelled and with fresh drums of ammunition aboard, he was back in the air again. On that flight and on another sortie that afternoon Bishop got into seven fights, four of them while doing “lone stuff.”
These are Bishop’s official reports of the first afternoon flight:
(1) At 12.15 east of Lens at 8,000 feet I attacked two hostile aircraft doing artillery-observation, firing twenty rounds into one. They then escaped. Watching five minutes later I saw only one H.A. there, the other evidently having been forced to land.
(2) At 12.15 east of Monchy at 6,000 feet I attacked two H.A. doing Art-Obs [Artillery Observation] but only succeeded in driving them away.
(3) At 12.40 over Monchy at 9,000 feet I attacked from underneath a two-seater returning from our lines; I fired a whole drum into him but there was no apparent result.
(4) At 1.05 over Pelves I attacked the same aircraft as in (2) and fired a drum at one of them from long range. No apparent result. I returned to the aerodrome as I had no more ammunition.
After lunch Bishop stretched out for a rest and was annoyed to find when he awoke that he had slept “all the way to tea time.”
Fry, as deputy leader of C Flight, offered to take the evening O.P., but Bishop insisted on leading it himself. For the fourth time that day C Flight took to the air. The five Nieuports climbed towards the Drocourt-Quéant Switch. It was a beautiful evening for flying. From Drocourt at twelve thousand feet the pilots could see the glistening dark-gold Channel, and beyond it the coast of England. Below the checkerboard pattern of what had been farm fields in peacetime was slashed by zigzag lines that were the trenches.
Two Albatros scouts abruptly intruded into the pleasant scene, the sun glinting on their red wings. Bishop and Fry dived, Bishop taking the rear machine. But his shooting was at long range and ineffectual. Then his gun jammed. He pulled at the toggle furiously and freed it just as an Albatros closed in on his tail.
He banked in a turn to the right and the Albatros overshot. At once Bishop banked to the left, dived and pulled up underneath the enemy plane. He fired twenty rounds wide of the mark and the German nosed down swiftly out of his reach. Even with the throttle pushed all the way forward his Nieuport couldn’t match the Albatros’s speed.
The patrol had split up in the fight and Bishop now found himself alone. But not for long. As he peered into the sun, he caught a flash, the reflection of a wingtip, and in a moment another Albatros fired at him. Bishop turned left and climbed, the Albatros shot by him, and with a quick manoeuvre he dropped back under its tail. But the speed of the Albatros took it out of effective range of Bishop’s long bursts. Bishop cursed the comparative slowness of the Nieu-port as he flew north toward Drocourt, changing ammunition drums as he went. His search for the rest of his patrol was interrupted by a mêlée of airplanes several thousand feet below. He hurried to join the fight.
Six Albatros scouts were attacking a trio of lumbering British observation planes. Bishop’s attack dispersed the German fighters and they stayed out of effectual range. Bishop continued to fire in the general direction of the Albatros scouts to prevent further attack on the reconnaissance planes. He circled over them for fifteen minutes. No enemy scouts returned, and when the two-seaters finished their job Bishop escorted them back across the lines.
The sun was beginning to set as Bishop touched down at Filescamp Farm, but that was no excuse for his unusually clumsy landing. Bourne looked disgustedly after Bishop as he jauntily walked away from his machine to the mess. “An hour’s work,” he muttered, examining two damaged wheels.
The rest of the patrol had returned, safe and triumphant. Fry and Horn had each shot down an enemy machine. Bishop was delighted at the news; the achievements of his Flight meant almost as much to him as his own success. In any case he had accounted for two enemy planes himself that morning, and during the day had engaged a total of twenty-three German aircraft.