The Kid Who Couldn't Miss (1983)

Directed by

Paul Cowan

Genre

documentary film, docudrama

Country

Canada

Runtime

1h 19m

Rating

8.0 of 10 from 1 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This docudrama blends fact and fiction to cast doubt on the achievements of World War I pilot Billy Bishop. It focuses on his celebrated solo mission and suggests he may have exaggerated or even fabricated his combat record.

questioningspeculativeprovocativedebate-drivenmelancholicreflectiverestrained

What happens

The Kid Who Couldn't Miss is a 1983 docudrama film directed by Paul Cowan. Produced by the National Film Board of Canada, it combines fact and fiction to question fighter pilot Billy Bishop's accomplishments during World War I, featuring excerpts from John MacLachlan Gray's play Billy Bishop Goes to War. The film specifically questions accounts of Bishop's solo mission to attack a German aerodrome on June 2, 1917, for which he was awarded a Victoria Cross, and suggests the event was imaginary and that Bishop exaggerated his own accomplishments. 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 the 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. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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