Billy Bishop’s early morning raid
Story by Sharon Adams
In the first two months of Billy Bishop’s flying career, from the end of March to the end of May 1917, the flying ace had brought down 22 planes and earned the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross. And his most famous exploit was yet to come.
On June 2, he took off in his Nieuport 17 aircraft from the home base of No. 60 Squadron in northern France, deliberately early in the morning, intending to destroy an aerodrome. “Dawn was the hour I considered advisable, as there would be very few machines in the air, and I would have a great chance of evading trouble on the way to the aerodrome,” he wrote in Winged Warfare.
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