Veneration can often bestow an undeserved degree of respectability upon stories which have come down to us from the past. Some of these stories even acquire the status of legends if they are repeated with sufficient regularity, and, like the “laws” which tend to limit the vision of the scientist, these legends can restrict the retrospection of the historian. Aviation has its share of such tales, and it is one of these which now needs to be re-examined in the light of several new pieces of evidence.

The central character of this story is that great eccentric Noel Pemberton Billing, and the aeroplane with which we are concerned is the P.B.9, a neat little biplane scout which appeared at the outbreak of the First World War.