THE COURAGE OF THE EARLY MORNING

Bishop keeps close to the record in this warm biography of his father, Billy Bishop, the Allied pilot with the highest record of kills in World War I. A Canadian in the RAF, he downed 72 German planes and had several exciting if inconclusive aerial battles with Baron von Richthofen. Nearly all the 72 kills are described; his father was an almost incompetent pilot but a magnificent gunner. At first, his inept piloting almost sent him back to flight school. But his first kill sparked him and within six months he became the second ranking ace, then first. Boosting his record developed into a consuming passion and he made as many as four missions a day, looking for Germans. His favorite trick was to attack a group of planes, blast one, and then fly like hell. On his last flight he shot down five planes in fifteen minutes. Feats such as this make this a stand-out in the literature of battle aces.