BEFORE FIRST LIGHT six Albatros scouts and a two-seater had been wheeled out of the hangars of Estourmel aerodrome, the base of Jagdstaffel V. The scouts’ engines were warming up. One pilot was already in his plane preparing to take off. The others were straggling across the field from breakfast in the mess.
Without warning a silver Nieuport with a blue nose streaked over the roof of the hangars, spraying bullets among the waiting planes.
Bishop had no idea where he was. He had lost his way in the cloud and had flown further into enemy territory than he intended. When he descended from the overcast he found himself over a deserted aerodrome. So he hunted around for another field and a few minutes later he sighted the shadowy shapes of hangar buildings away to the right. The aerodrome that Bishop had found was Estourmel, near Cambrai, although he did not know it at the time. In fact in his report he stated it to be either Esnes or Awoignt. He came down to two hundred feet and turned towards them. As he drew near he saw the line of machines and went into a shallow dive. His first burst carried him to the far edge of the field, where he pulled his Nieuport into a tight climbing turn. He could see men running on to the field and a machine-gun opened fire at him from the ground. Bullets ripped his wingtips. He swerved to dodge the bullets that crackled all around him. The Albatros pilot who was already in his plane had gunned his motor and was gaining speed for takeoff. Bishop went after it.
The German fighter was only ten feet off the ground when Bishop pressed the firing button from sixty yards’ range. Without enough speed to dodge the attack, the Albatros took the full blast of a burst of fifteen rounds, sideslipped, and crashed. Another Albatros started to roar across the field. Bishop fired at it from a hundred yards and missed, but the attack so unnerved the pilot that he crashed into a tree at the edge of a field, tearing off the right wings. Bishop fired one last volley into the wrecked machine, then hauled back on the control stick and climbed.
Two more machines now started to take off in opposite directions. (“There won’t be any wind at that time of the morning and the planes will be able to get off in any direction,” Grid Caldwell had warned. “In that case I’ll just have to streak for home,” Bishop had replied.) But he had no choice but to stay and fight it out.
One Albatros flew away from the aerodrome and hovered at a safe distance, but the other made straight for Bishop, who turned as the German pilot closed in behind him. The enemy tried to follow, taking a fast shot. Bishop saw an opening and fired. Twice the machines circled around each other, but neither pilot could get in a position for a decisive burst.
Once again as in many another battle, the Nieuport’s sole advantage over the Albatros—its manoeuvrability—came to Bishop’s rescue. He got underneath and at a slight angle to the Albatros, and finished his first drum of ammunition in a long burst. It struck the fuselage just in front of the pilot and put the engine out of action. The Albatros crashed four hundred feet from the aerodrome.
Bishop was now intent on making his escape. No doubt the aerodrome he was attacking had sent an alarm to other nearby fields, and Heaven knew how many fighters were swarming toward the scene. One comfort was that no more planes were attempting to take off from the field.
For the moment he had forgotten the fourth enemy plane, which so far had stayed clear of the fighting, but it now was bearing in. The German pilot opened fire at three hundred yards’ range. Bishop saw the flashes from the twin Spandau guns, and turned away sharply. His own ammunition drum was empty.
Changing an ammunition drum while flying a plane was a tricky job at best, and to do it while dodging the bullets of a skilled and tenacious pursuer was a difficult feat of sleight-of-hand. Bishop had practised the procedure endlessly—minus the enemy plane, of course—and somehow he managed it now without giving the Albatros pilot a fatal advantage. Bishop had no intention of continuing the dogfight. His aim was to get away from there as quickly as possible.
But to make his escape he would either have to shoot down the Albatros or chase it away. He pointed the nose of his plane in the general direction of the other machine, pressed his thumb on the Lewis gun’s firing button, and kept it there. The German pilot had undoubtedly never had the entire ninety-nine rounds of a Lewis gun’s ammunition drum thrown at him in one prolonged burst. He broke off the fight and dived toward his aerodrome.
Bishop did not wait to see his opponent land. He turned west and climbed with all the power he could coax from the Le Rhône engine. His gun was smoking from the stress of firing a whole drum of ammunition without interruption. When it had cooled after a few miles, Bishop disconnected it from its mount and hurled it overboard. It was now dead weight and he would need all the speed he could muster.
For the first time that morning the clouds had broken, and here and there shafts of sunlight shone through. Bishop knew that such cloud formations made ideal lurking places for enemy scouts, and he kept a wary watch as he flew from patch to patch. Three miles west of Cambrai he sighted four enemy planes cloud-hopping in the same direction, two thousand feet above him. At first he caught only fleeting glimpses of the planes through the clear patches. Further west the clouds disappeared and the five planes were flying in a clear sky.
Bishop had never been in a tighter spot. The Germans did not appear to have seen him—yet. But at any moment one of the pilots might look down—and four planes with eight guns blazing would dive on the slower unarmed Nieuport. Bishop tried to keep his position directly under the enemy formation, in what he hoped might be a blind spot. Cautiously he followed their manoeuvres: as they turned, he turned. The general direction of the formation was taking him further and further south. He knew that he would soon have to make a break for it. He counted ten slowly, then dived in the direction of the front lines at full power. When he looked back the German planes were continuing their patrol—the enemy pilots never became aware of his presence.
His dive brought Bishop down to a thousand feet, and as he crossed the enemy lines anti-aircraft fire straddled the Nieuport. He dived, climbed and swerved to dodge the flying shrapnel. Time and again he heard a sharp snapping sound of shrapnel ripping the tight-stretched fabric of his plane. One of the lower wings, already damaged in the attack on Estourmel, now looked like tattered clothing flapping on a clothesline in a high wind. The barrage suddenly and mercifully ceased as he crossed the lines near Bapaume.
Bishop turned northwest towards Filescamp Farm. It was exactly fifteen minutes after five. The sky was calm and crystal clear and oddly haunting. The exhilaration of the early morning battle was gone. Bishop began to feel ill: “I flew in a daze. I was feeling queer at my stomach. The excitement and the reaction afterwards had been too much. My head was going around and around, and something had to happen. For the only time in my life I thought I was losing my senses. It was a horrible feeling and I also had the sensation that I would suffer from nausea any minute. Nothing mattered except the struggle to bring the plane safely to earth.”
At half past five Bishop was over Filescamp Farm and feeling a little better. The aerodrome was still asleep, just as he had left it an hour and a half before. It seemed impossible that since then he had experienced the greatest adventure of his life.
Jubilantly, he fired off light after light from his Very pistol to signal his triumph and arouse the slumberers below. A crowd of ground crewmen led by Corporal Walter Bourne ran to greet him as he climbed out of the cockpit holding up three fingers and calling out rather incoherently, “Three of them taking off, one in a scrap—wicked ground fire—missed the other one.”
Bourne as usual turned his attention to the plane as soon as he saw Bishop was unhurt. He took in the innumerable holes and slashes in the wings, fuselage and tail, and uttered an incredulous whistle. “Beats me how the thing stayed in one piece, sir!”
Jack Scott reported Bishop’s early morning sortie to his immediate superior, George Pretyman at Wing Headquarters. By midmorning the news had spread across the Western Front. General Higgins, the brigade commander, wired congratulations, and so did the commander of the Flying Corps, General Trenchard, who wired Bishop that the raid was “the greatest single show of the war.” And before the day was out the army commander-in-chief, Sir Douglas Haig, had added his own congratulations.
Maurice Baring, whose essays and books on the RFC remain classics, made this note of Bishop’s exploit in his diary: “Think of the audace of it.” And Molesworth, who arrived back from leave that afternoon, described it in a letter home: “Our stunt merchant’s star turn was shooting up an aerodrome. You can imagine how the fat old Huns ran, as nothing like this ever happened to them before. I believe his name has been put in for something big in the decoration line.”