Filled from cover to cover with black-and-white and color photographs, Canada's Warplanes by Dan McCaffery is a remarkable and enthusiastically recommended showcase of 24 distinctive military aircraft carefully preserved in Canadian aviation museums. The intelligent text astutely recounts details, history, and highlights of these remarkable aviation machines and their contribution to Canadian and world history.

While I have found this book to be of some use in my research, and in creating my web site, I have also found it to be somewhat flawed. First I think it is a mistake to think that Dan McCaffrey is an Historian. As it says on the back cover, at the time he wrote the book, he was a newspaper man. That, does not an historian make.

Also, I don't believe a real historian would take something that someone told them was 3rd hand information and present it as proof. He did that in at least one part of the book, and that information comes from a respected air Historian, the Late Phillip Markham.

But, I did find some of the information in the book interesting, and helpful in various ways. As long as you're willing to live with printing errors and take this caution, I believe the book is worth the time. Though perhaps not the money.

Billy Bishop, the highest-scoring Allied fighter pilot of World War I was a man that gave a new face to Canadian pride and patriotism. Having shot down a total of 75 confirmed victories (72 planes and 3 German balloons), he broke the records of other prominent fighter pilots, being second only next to his German counterpart, Manfred von Richthofen (who shot down 80). Bishop was a man of fame, but he was certainly not without controversy. Many critics and historians have since launched attacks on the man, denigrading him and leaving his legend in tatters and surrounded with uncertainty...until now.

In this excellent and superbly-written biography, historian Dan McCaffery has not only examined Bishop the man and his fast-growing legend, but also has set the controversy to rest in light of new and previously untapped interviews with comrades and extensive readings of primary and secondary sources on the topic. Was Bishop truly honest about many of his victory claims? Find out for yourselves! Reading like a fast-paced novel, Bishop is depicted in a very well-deserving light characteristic of a hero and living legend. What more can readers and aviation history buffs seeking the truth behind the man and his amazing deeds in the skies over the Western Front ask for?

As a Canadian, this reviewer sees the lack of heros and an identity crisis that the country of Canada is experiencing. Bishop is the type of individual that stirs pride and patriotism, and certainly represents the Canadian youth that were among some of the best fighter pilots of the Great War.(1) Should these great and brave individuals not be acknowledged and remembered with pride as Canada's history grows? Form your own opinion (as you will), but Canadians are doing an unbelievably shoddy job of remembering and acknowledging, all sense of pride being lost amid attacks and accusations of hero-worship and pro-war propaganda. McCaffery and his work is the little bit of acknowledgment and pride-stirring history that Billy Bishop fully deserves.

This book remains the definitive work on the subject, and Mr. McCaffery is to be congradulated for writing and exposing the truth behind this Canadian legend and icon. Let Bishop go down in history as a Canadian Hero, and by reading this book, one will gain tremendous insight into what made Bishop tick, and what a true hero is made of.

Edition which was reviewed: Dan McCaffery, "Billy Bishop: Canadian Hero." (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1988).

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1. For an excellent discussion of this issue, see Denis Winter, "The First of the Few: Fighter Pilots of the First World War" (London: Allen Lane, 1982); and Dan McCaffery, "Air Aces: The Lives and Times of Twelve Canadian Fighter Pilots" (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1990).

This book gives a good overall view of the Canadian participation in the British Bomber campaign in World War II. The book has vignettes from Canadian aircrew, but also of Germans who were on the receiving end of their bombs. The book in it's brief 176 pages gives the reader a good feeling of what itwas to fly in the bombers over Germany at night during the war. He has many personal interviews interroven through out the book, these include stories from the author's father and uncle. The only negative is the book is a little slim for it's price. It also delves into the contoversey of carpet bombing and the ethics of the whole bomber campaign. On the whole the book is good, with old and new material included to give a good overview of what it was like to fly bombers in the war.