Winged Peace: The Story of the Air Age

Peter Henderson teaches history at Douglas College in New Westminster,
British Columbia.

This book, first published in 1944, has not been revised to any useful
extent since the author, the famous Billy Bishop, died in 1956. It
should have been titled “A Personal History of Aviation Up to the
Middle of World War II, with Some Speculations on the Future as It Was
Perceived Around That Date.” The cover, showing a Concorde airliner
against a representation of our globe as seen from space, as well as the
title, is thoroughly misleading.

The book tells us that in addition to being an authentic man of action,
Bishop was also literate. He had, for his time, some prescient ideas
about the future of aviation. Winged Peace includes some new anecdotes
about some of Bishop’s personal experiences.

For the most part, however, the content repeats well-known events and
is of interest only to the most dedicated enthusiasts of aviation
history. The few illustrations in this book have been published often
before, and are poor.