Flying in the face of adversity
Hero pilot Sir Douglas Bader was born 110 years ago. MARION McMULLEN looks at the amazing life of the flying ace who couldn’t be grounded, even after he lost both of his legs
HE was a hero of the Battle of Britain, the scourge of the German Luftwaffe and survived being imprisoned in the infamous Colditz. Douglas Bader was just 21 when he lost both legs in an almost-fatal plane crash. He was flying low at Woodley Aerodrome when his wingtip caught the ground.
Civilian pilot Percy Cruttenden from Cardiff saw the crash and promptly rushed to pull him clear before tying off the arteries in his legs.
“I was first on the spot and pulled him clear,” Percy later remembered. “There was plenty of petrol around the place but luckily no fire. I bound up his legs – using the little first aid I knew – and went with him the hospital.”
Doctors had to amputate both legs in order to save Douglas’s life and, under the King’s Regulations, it was the end of his flying career. He was given a pair of artificial legs, but the RAF turned down his request to rejoin them.
However, he applied again at the outbreak of the Second World War as the RAF was so short of pilots. Soon he was taking to the skies once more and ended up downing 22 German planes.
“Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you can’t do this or that,” he once said. “That’s nonsense. Make up your mind you’ll never use crutches or a stick, then have a go at everything.”
He also told youngsters with disabilities: “Go to school, join in all the games you can. Go anywhere you want to, but never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible.”
At one point Douglas filled his artificial legs with ping pong balls to give him the edge in case he had to bail out of the plane over water. He soon discovered a flaw in his plan though... the balls exploded at high altitude.
The fighter pilot was born on February 21, 1910, and rewrote the rule book on aerial combat. He introduced the tactic of flying at very high altitude, then thundering down on the Luftwaffe planes with guns blazing.
He ran into trouble when his plane was sliced in two by an enemy propeller when he was carrying out a solo attack on German planes in France in 1941. He tried to bail out, but one of his false legs became caught and snapped in two.
“I then realised my appearance was a bit odd,” he later said. “My right leg was no longer with me. It had caught somewhere in the top of the cockpit as I tried to leave my Spitfire.”
Douglas was captured and taken to hospital where, as an act of courtesy, the Germans contacted the RAF and asked for a replacement leg to be parachuted over to him. When it arrived, Douglas waited barely 48 hours before embarking on his first escape attempt.
He was recaptured and sent to Germany and eventually ended up in at the infamous Colditz prison behind 70ft high walls on a 100ft cliff. It did not stop him from continuing to try to escape though and, at one point, guards threatened to take his false legs away from him.
“Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men,” the flying ace once pointed out.
He remained in Colditz until the end of the war and his story was later told in 1956 in British movie Reach For The Sky, based on the biography by Paul Brickhill.
Actor Kenneth Moore played Bader and had his legs encased in aluminium to capture the gait of walking with metal legs. He also met the pilot to prepare for the role and they played a round of golf... Douglas Bader beat him.
Reach For The Sky became the biggest grossing film of the year, but Douglas took director Lewis Gilbert to task over the script.
Lewis later said: “When he read the script he said I had made a terrible hash of it because I’d cut out a lot of his friends. I pointed out that the book contained hundreds of names and I had to cut it down or else the film would run for three days.”
The movie went on to win the Bafta for best British film and Douglas Bader received a CBE from the Queen, the same year as the movie’s release, for services to the disabled.
Percy Cruttenden, who had come to his aid all those years earlier, following the plane crash, was invited to attend the red-carpet premiere in London’s Leicester Square along with his wife.
The legendary fighter pilot was knighted in 1976 and passed away in 1982 at the age of 72.
Of his attack strategy, he once said: “If you held your fire until you were very close, you seldom missed.”