Billy Bishop - Legacy

Legacy

Bishop's life was depicted in the famous Canadian play, Billy Bishop Goes to War. It also led indirectly to a CBC Television documentary called The Kid Who Couldn't Miss, produced by the National Film Board of Canada. The show, a "docudrama" combining known history for credibility with fictitious "mock interviews" with actors portraying Bishop and others, suggested that Bishop faked his famous attack on the German aerodrome. In one particularly contentious scene, his mechanic claims that the damage to his fighter was confined to a small circle in a non-critical area, implying that Bishop had landed his aircraft off-field, shot holes in it, and then flown home with claims of combat damage. In reality his mechanic was his biggest supporter in this issue and the scene was entirely fictitious. The mechanic insisted that Bishop had not fabricated the damage.

After years of controversy over Bishop's record, mainly due to the fact very few of his claimed victories were witnessed by anyone else or could be confirmed from surviving German records, the show led to an inquiry by the Canadian government in 1985. The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology discredited the documentary, saying it was an unfair and inaccurate portrayal of Bishop. There is some dispute about whether Bishop or Mick Mannock had the highest score of any British Empire First World War fighter ace.