Douglas Bader: The RAF Fighter Ace Who Flew, Fought and Escaped on Two Artificial Legs

A Bristol Bulldog rolls onto its back low over a Berkshire airfield, holds inverted against a grey winter sky, and then its wingtip skims the grass. Within days, surgeons will take both of Pilot Officer Douglas Bader's legs, and the RAF career he has wanted since he was a schoolboy looks finished before it has properly begun.

This episode matters because the cheerful, unbreakable Bader of postwar legend was built on a life considerably harder and more complicated than the story ever let on, a man who talked his way back into a cockpit on two artificial legs, led fighters through the Battle of Britain, and spent years as a prisoner of war refusing to stay put.

In this episode:

• Bader's nineteen thirty-one crash at Woodley Aerodrome and the amputations that followed
• His years fighting the Air Ministry to be allowed back in the cockpit, and his eventual return in nineteen thirty-nine
• Command of Two Forty-Two Squadron during the Battle of Britain and his role in the controversial Big Wing tactic
• Being shot down over France in nineteen forty-one, losing a leg in the bail-out, and the extraordinary parachute drop that replaced it
• His repeated escape attempts as a prisoner of war, his time at Colditz Castle, and how Reach for the Sky turned his story into legend

Listen if you're interested in:

• RAF fighter pilots and the Battle of Britain
• Stories of disability, determination and wartime leadership
• Prisoner-of-war escape attempts and life inside Colditz Castle
• How real lives become postwar legend on the page and on screen

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