Douglas Bader

Douglas Bader, 1940

Sir Douglas Robert Steuart Bader CBE , DSO with clasp , DFC with clasp (born February 21, 1910 in St. John's Wood (London) ; † September 5, 1982 ibid) was a British fighter pilot and a symbol of the values ​​and success of the Royal Air Force .

Douglas Bader entered the elite Royal Air Force Academy in Cranwell as a cadet in 1928 . After two years of training as a fighter pilot, he graduated with no distinction and took up active flight service. His impressive aerobatic maneuvers soon became known among the RAF, and so in 1931 he was persuaded by comrades to demonstrate his skills at Woodley Airfield.

When attempting to fly a controlled roll at low altitude over the field on December 14, 1931, his Bristol Bulldog biplane hit the ground with the wing. Bader was only seriously injured, one leg had to be rescued immediately, the other a few days later be amputated.

The recovery process was lengthy, but was made possible by the production of leg prostheses from the workshop of the former aircraft designers Marcel and Robert Dessoutter, with whom Bader learned to walk upright and without a stick in a distinctive way.

Bader got a job with the Shell Oil Company , but it never really filled him. He married his wife Thelma, who had been a waitress when he met her, in 1935.

After the outbreak of the Second World War , Bader applied to the RAF position commission and, with the benevolence of some of his former comrades from Cranwell, was reinstated in the RAF. Despite his disability, he was able to pass all required flight tests flawlessly.

In February 1940 he was posted to active duty with the 19th  Squadron in Duxford near London, shortly afterwards he was given command of a group of the 222nd Squadron equipped with a Supermarine Spitfire . A new Spitfire he had flown broke due to an operator error, Bader was uninjured.

During a deployment as part of Operation Dynamo to relieve the British Expeditionary Force on his retreat from the mainland via the port of Dunkirk , he achieved his first victory in the air against a Messerschmitt Bf 109 E of the Luftwaffe .

In June 1940 Bader was entrusted with the command of the Canadian 242nd Squadron. The pilots of this squadron, drawn and demoralized by the loss-making battle for retreat in France , initially had little confidence in the flying abilities of Bader, who was already somewhat older and amputated. But immediately after a short interview, he performed a perfect half-hour aerobatics demonstration over the heads of the amazed Canadians. Subsequently, he worked uncompromisingly for the needs of the squadron, personally took care of the training and in a very short time had welded the group together into a showcase squadron.

On August 30, twelve aircraft of the squadron under his leadership attacked a German formation of 30 bombers and fighters and were able to shoot down twelve of them. In the debriefing on this success, Bader remarked that the success would have been far greater had they been able to attack with three times as many aircraft. In this phase of the Battle of Britain , however, a tactic was pursued which stipulated formations of the strength of a squadron, i.e. twelve aircraft, as the largest jointly commanded attack unit among the fighters .

This was due to the concern that a larger association would be too inflexible and that there was a risk of sacrificing too many reserves at once. An important advocate of this view was the commander of the 11th Fighter Group, Air Vice Marshal Keith Park , which carried the brunt of the defense of southern England in the critical phase.

But Bader's squadron was subordinate to the 12th Fighter Group, which was led by Air Vice Marshal Leigh-Mallory . Leigh-Mallory was immediately enthusiastic about the idea and first brought three, then five squadrons together to form a "Fighter Wing", which in number roughly corresponded to the group of a fighter wing of the Air Force. The association became known as the "Duxford Wing" and was led into battle by Douglas Bader. By the end of 1940, the Duxford Wing had over 150 kills and lost 30 pilots. The Big Wing controversy between Park and Leigh-Mallory was fueled and never entirely resolved.

In March 1941 Bader took over the management of the Tangmere Wing stationed on the Channel coast , where he experienced the zenith of his career as a fighter pilot. The most successful British fighter pilot, James Edgar Johnson , scored his first aerial victory as a pilot in the 616th Squadron as one of the units of the Tangmere Wing during this period. Numerous clashes between the Spitfires under the direction of "Dogsbody", as he was called by the British ground radar (his Spitfire had the code "DB" next to the squadron letter ) and the "Kanaljäger" of Jagdgeschwader 26 led by Adolf Galland were reported during this time . Like Galland, Bader was known to friends and foes alike.

On August 9, 1941, in the course of a wild aerial battle over French territory, according to Bader's own description, there was a collision between the Spitfire "Dogsbodys" and an Air Force machine. It was later speculated that it could have been a shot down by the on-board cannons of a Bf 109. Bader was able to get out with the parachute, previously lost his right prosthetic leg in the cockpit and his left prosthesis was damaged. When he was caught, Galland could not resist and brought the charismatic Briton to his base in Saint Omer to have him "test sit" in a Bf 109. It was agreed that a replacement pair of Bader's custom-made prostheses would be dropped, as the German high command refused to allow a British courier aircraft to enter French soil. The prostheses were dropped at night by a British bomber who was returning from a bombing on Wehrmacht facilities. Galland's portrayal differs from this. According to him, the prostheses were also dropped during a bombing of military facilities.

After an unsuccessful attempt to escape from the castle of Saint Omer, Bader was transferred to the prison camp Oflag IV-C in the Colditz fortress in Saxony , where he was only liberated by American troops in 1945. Although Bader immediately visited a unit of the RAF in France , he was banned from a final enemy flight with a Spitfire. Bader ended the war as a flying ace with 22.5 kills awarded in a period of 18 months. At the Victory Parade in London, he led the Flypast , a formation of 300 RAF aircraft, in a Spitfire Mk. IX .

In 1946 he left the RAF at his own request and again took up a position with the Shell Oil Company, but this time to set up and manage an internal flight service with a worldwide operational area. He received his own aircraft for his work, and his wife Thelma was his loyal companion on his travels until her death.

In 1956, his aviation life with Kenneth More in the leading role was filmed under the title " In spite of all violence " by Lewis Gilbert .

In 1976 he was beaten by Queen Elizabeth II because of his services to the interests of war invalids to the Knight Bachelor .

On September 5, 1982, after a lecture in London, he succumbed to a heart condition.

literature

• Willem Kristian Nicolaas van der Meij: No leg to stand on. Historical relation between amputation surgery and protheseology. Groningen 1995, pp. 179-182.

Web links

• Find a grave , accessed August 6, 2016.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Volker Klimpel: Famous amputees. In: Würzburger medical history reports 23, 2004, pp. 313–327; here: p. 324 f.
2. ↑ right a thigh light metal prosthesis with uniaxial knee and ankle joint, left a conventional lower leg prosthesis. Volker Klimper (2004), p. 325.
3. ↑ Volker Klimpel (2004), p. 325.
4. ^ The London Gazette : No. 46919, p. 8015 , HMSO, June 4, 1976.