WAR

'--
Nieuport 17.
Leaning against
the lower wing is
Major W. A. Bishop, V . C.
Bishop (Later an
Air Marshal of the RCAF)
is credited with 72
officially confirmed
victories.
- .'-,.
_.
-
Albert Ball had been born in Nottingham on August 21, 1896. As a child
he had been a crack pistol shot. This, like many of his other accomplishments
and preoccupations, was vital to his eventual success as a fighter pilot. He was
mechanically inclined, always "messing about," as he put it, with mechanical and
electrical devices. Later, in the RFC, he spent a great deal of time souping up the
engines of his aeroplanes, and doing all of the maintenance work on his own
machine guns. He also knew how to relax—he played the violin and cultivated
neat,
tiny vegetable patches wherever he was stationed.
Ball flew ceaselessly with No. 13 Squadron in the obsolete B.E.2c's, which
were easy meat even for the Eindecker. In No. 1 1 Squadron he flew without interruption
from May to the end of July. With No. 1 1 he evolved his unique tactics.
He felt there was safety in numbers—enemy numbers. The larger the formation
of German aeroplanes, the safer he felt in attacking them. His method was to
plunge straight in without any jockeying for position, for he believed once he
was in the midst of the enemy machines their pilots
and gunners would be unable
to shoot at him for fear of hitting their squadron mates. As for him, he couldn't
miss, since targets were all around him. As a result of these tactics he brought
his Nieuport home full of holes on many occasions and crashed on many others,
yet he always got away with a
whole skin.
He was still the marksman he had been as a boy, and another of his tactics
he evolved from a combination of that and his good reflexes. He would begin
his attack on an enemy machine by diving. As he passed his victim and went on
down he would pivot back the Lewis gun on the top wing and squeeze off a
short burst during the instant that the enemy machine was in his line of fire—aiming
either at the engine or at the spot in the under side of the fuselage where he
had to hit to put his shots up into the pilot's cockpit. He rarely missed.
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