Sir Douglas Robert Steuart Bader

From The Air Combat Wiki

Douglas Bader served as a source of inspiration and hope in the early days of World War II when England stood alone under the threat of German invasion. His leadership and those like him helped turn the tide during the Battle of Britain. Douglas was born in 1910 in London, the son of a soldier who died young from injuries suffered in World War I. An excellent student and sportsman, he won a scholarship to St. Edwards School in Oxford. A champion boxer, he captained the Rugby team at RAF College in Cranwell. Bader joined the Royal Air Force as a cadet in 1928 and was commissioned as an officer in 1930. On December 14, 1931, he attempted low flying aerobatics at Woodley airfield in a fighter. His plane crashed when the tip of the left wing touched the ground. As a result of his injuries, both his legs were amputated - one leg above and one below the knee. Although he was still able to fly with artificial legs, he was invalided out of the RAF. He then took an office job with the Asiatic Petroleum Company.

With the severe need for experienced pilots during the outbreak of hostilities, Bader was able to rejoin the RAF and was given the rank of Flight Commander and posted to 222 Squadron, flying Spitfires. After participating in operations over Dunkirk, he was given command of 242 Squadron, a squadron that had suffered high losses in the Battle of France. Although, low on moral and suspicious of their new commander, the pilots were soon won over by Bader’s personality and work ethic. Bader’s habit of cutting red tape and battling high command led to frequent criticism. Many felt that his objective of meeting the Luftwaffe prior to the English coast left many of his assigned areas unprotected. Bader quickly became a supporter of Air Vice-Marshal Leigh-Mallory’s “Big Wing” plan of assembling large formations of fighters north of London to attack German formations in mass. Commander Bader frequently found himself leading groups of up to five squadrons of fighters, looking to inflict as much damage as possible on enemy formations.

Following the end of the Battle of Britain, Bader was promoted to Wing Commander and become one of the first 'Wing Leaders'. Wing commander Bader began to lead Spitfire sweeps through France in an effort to tie down Luftwaffe units that could have supported operations on the Eastern Front. One of the Wing Leader's 'perks' was permission to have their initials marked on their aircraft as personal identification, thus ' D-B ' was painted on the side of Bader's Spitfire. These letters gave rise to his radio call-sign "Dogsbody."

By August 1941, Bader had claimed 22 German planes shot down, the fifth highest total in the RAF. On August 9, 1941, Bader was shot down and taken prisoner. Although he believed for years that he had collided in mid-air with a German ME-109 over Le Touquet, recent research shows no Bf-109 was lost to a collision that day and he may have been shot down by a Me-109F of II/JG26 flown by Feldwebel Meyer. As he tried to bail out, one of his prosthetic legs became trapped in the aircraft, and he only escaped when the leg's retaining straps broke.

Bader was captured by German forces, who treated him with great respect. General Adolf Galland, a German flying ace, notified the British of his damaged leg and offered them safe passage to drop off a replacement. The British responded on 19 August 1941 with the 'Leg Operation'- an RAF bomber was allowed to drop a new prosthetic leg by parachute to St Omer, a Luftwaffe base in occupied France as part of Circus 81 involving 6 Blenheim bombers and a sizeable fighter escort. The Germans were less impressed when, task done, the bombers proceeded onto their bombing mission to Gosnay power station, near Bethune although bad weather prevented the target being attacked. Bader tried to escape from the hospital where he was recovering, and over the next few years proved as big a thorn in the side of the Germans as he had been to the RAF establishment. He made so many attempts at escape that the Germans threatened to take away his legs. Initially held at Stalag LUFT III at Sagan, his 'goon-baiting' of the camp guards reached such heights that he was finally dispatched to the "escape proof" Colditz Castle Oflag IV-C, where he remained until the end of the war.

After returning to England, Bader stayed in the Air Force until February 1946. He left to take a job at Royal Dutch-Shell. Bader resumed playing golf, an enthusiasm developed after his amputation, achieving a handicap in the low single figures.

He died of a heart attack in on 5th September 1982 at the age of 72, after a London Guildhall dinner honoring the 90th birthday of the Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris.

Bader's biography, Reach for the Sky, was written after the war by Paul Brickhill and became a best seller.