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Hugo Black — Part 2
Page 93
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diasl Le
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10 CURRENY BIOGRAPHY
BISHOP, WILLIAM AVERY—Coutinued
Ohio, where Bishop served as member of a
British air mission, that he wrote his first
book, Winged Werfare (1918). He then
recruited in Canada and instructed in England
until the spring of 1918.
Back in France, with a price on his head,
Billy Bishop kept on fying his silver machine
with its easily-recognized blue snout into and
out of tight places. Once his squadron actually
lost eleven planes out of eighteen in one day.
In May 1918 he formed his own squadron,
No. 85, picking the cteam of the pilots from
the English, the Canadian and the United
States Air Forces. But the next month the
General Staff decided he was too valuable to
run further risks, and he was given 12 days
in which to prepare to leave for London to
do administrative work and help with recruiting.
Up to that time Bishop had shot down the
startling total of 45 German planes. In the
next twelve days he shot down twenty-five
more—a larger number than the entire RAF
had downed during the first month of the
War—five of them in two hours on his last
day as a pilot! When Billy Bishop finally
signed on as a first grade staff officer (lieu-
tenant colonel) on the Canadian General Staff
his record showed 72 enemy aircraft destroyed,
170 battles fought in mid-air, 10 well-earned
decorations. The King suggested this time:
“There are no more letters we can put after
your name, so ] suggest we put some before it,
and call you ‘Archbishop.'”
In the period between the two Wars Bishop
mingled business and fying. First he went to
the United States and traveled through the
country lecturing, but he soon‘ returned to
England, where he lived for 10 years, “prom-
inent in financial and polo circles.” In 1922
this skilled airman, who during the War had
ence fallen 4,000 feet in a burning plane and
who had often limped back home in his plane
with scores of bullet holes in its fuselage,
came nearer to losing his life than he ever
had before. Injured in a civil flying accident,
he nearly lost his sight; the plastic surgeons
had to go to work on him: and, once restored
to health, he did not pilot a plane fer 12 or
13 years.
In 1931 Bishop came back to Canada to
become vice-president of the McColl-Fronte-
nac Oil Company, Limited, Montreal, one of
Canada’s largest companies. (His business
career has included successful operations in
investment banking, and he is a director of
the English Electric Company of Canada.)
By this time he had also attained the honorary
rank of group captain in the Royal Canadian
Air Force, and soon he was wanting to fly
again. He asked a friend to lend him a ship.
As he tells it: “In 13 years they'd made new
tules in my game—-had made flying a science.
There was only one thing to do—I had to
learn flying all over again.” .
After a few lessons from an expert, Bishop
was as confident as..ever. In 1936 he was
promoted to the rank of Air Vice-Marshal,
in 1938 to Air Marshal--and in August 1938
he was made a member of the Honorary
it
hla ="
Air Advisory Committee tu the Minister of
National Defense. He had previously written
that Canada’s aviation policy was one of
“drifting,” and had urged training an ex-
tensive air personnel and building machines
of the best quality. Now he was to take an
active part in carrying out his own advice.
After Canada joined Great liritain in declaring
war against Germany, on September 8, 1939
Bishop was called up for active service with
the Royal Canadian Air Force, and not long
afterward he was given the office of Director
of Air Force Recruiting.
Today Bishop is “a shert man with very
blue cyes and a closely cropped mustache’
whose formerly sandy hair has thinned out
and grizzled, while his carlicr slimness has
given place to some inercase in girth. Quentin
Reynalds (see sketch March issuc) calls hin.
“an intelligent, cultured gentleman, a dou
vivant, an extraordinary host, one of the
keenest businessmen in Canada.” His wife
collects china dogs; his own “collection” hangs
on his library walls, and includes the blue-
snouted propeller of 1918 days and the wing
tip of Richthefen’s plane. In his library
might also be found another book he has
written since that War with Rothesay Staart-
Wortley: The Flvtag Squad (1927)" Among
his most treasured possessions is a book
presented to him hy the Berlin Acro Club
at a banquet in 1926, when Lishoy., as their
guest, was photographed with Goering (sev
sketch August issue). In it Goering and
others have inscribed “sreetings = a com-
petitor from the other side.”
Riding, goli, polo and tennis are Dilis
Bishop's sports. Of the usual Canadian winter
doings this amazing mar says: “No, I
can't skate. It burts my shins. As for skiing
—say, To don't know where those fellows get
the courage. The falls you take. IT shiver
every time I sec one of them go down. I'd
be scared stiff to try it!"
References
Collier's 95:87-90 N 21 '36 por
Life 8:44 My 20 ‘40 il pars
Halstead, 1. Wings of Victory pljl-7
194]
Kiernan, RK. H. Capiain Albert Ball
1934
Who's Who
Who's Who in Canada
BLACK, HUGO (LA FAYETTE) Feb
27, 1886- Associate Justice of the United
States Supreme Court
Address: b. Supreme .Court Bldg, Washing-
ton, D. C.; h. Birmingham, Ala.
Hugo Black took his position as Associate
Justice of the United States Supreme Court
in August 1937 after one of the most bitter
and vigorous discussions of all time, after “an
orgy of vituperation.” Today lawyers and.
laymen alike aré praising his “succinct, lawyer-
like and pointed opinions” on this court, the
“clarity, power and perspicacity of his dis-
sents.”
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