Sir Douglas Robert Steuart Bader was a Royal Air Force flying ace during the Second World War. He was credited with 22 aerial victories, four shared victories, six probables, one shared probable and 11 enemy aircraft damaged. Bader joined the RAF in 1928, and was commissioned in 1930. In December 1931, while attempting some aerobatics, he crashed and lost both his legs.
About Douglas Bader in brief
Sir Douglas Robert Steuart Bader was a Royal Air Force flying ace during the Second World War. He was credited with 22 aerial victories, four shared victories, six probables, one shared probable and 11 enemy aircraft damaged. Bader joined the RAF in 1928, and was commissioned in 1930. In December 1931, while attempting some aerobatics, he crashed and lost both his legs. Despite his disability, Bader made a number of escape attempts and was eventually sent to the prisoner of war camp at Colditz Castle. He left the RAF permanently in February 1946 and resumed his career in the oil industry. In the Queen’s Birthday Honours 1976, he was appointed a Knight Bachelor for services to disabled people. He continued to fly until ill health forced him to stop in 1979. He died, aged 72, on 5 September 1982, after a heart attack. His father saw action in the First World War in the Royal Engineers and was wounded in action in 1917. His mother showed little interest in Bader and sent him to his grandparents on occasion. At one point he was deemed to be so good that he was invited to play cricket with the Harlequins, but it is not clear whether he actually played. He also attended Temple Grove School, one of the \”Famous Five\” of English prep schools, however one which gave its boys a Spartan upbringing. He then went to St Edward’s School, where he received his secondary education. During his time there, he played rugby and often enjoyed physical battles with bigger and older opponents.
The aggressive nature of Bader’s nature, he made him a prefect despite what others saw as a strong streak of conceit in him. He later went on to play a first-class match against the Army at the Oval in July 1931. His first two years were spent with McCann relatives in the Isle of Man while his father, accompanied by his mother and older brother Frederick, returned to his work in India after the birth of his son. He remained in France after the war, where, having attained the rank of major, he died in 1922 of complications from those wounds in a hospital in Saint-Omer, the same area where Bader would bail out and be captured in 1941. In August 1941, he baled out over German-occupied France and was captured. Soon afterward, he met and was befriended by Adolf Galland, a prominent German fighter ace, and became a friend and supporter of Air Vice Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory and his \”Big Wing\” experiments. In February 1946, he resumed his RAF career and was accepted as a pilot. During the 1950s, a book and a film, Reach for the Sky, chronicled his life and RAF career to the end of the Second WWII. Bader then resumed his oil industry career and worked in the West Yorkshire village of Sprotbrough, near Doncaster, West Riding of Yorkshire. In July 1961, he married his long-term girlfriend, the former Mrs. Henry Kendall.
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