The WWII classic film Reach For The Sky immortalised the legless hero Douglas Bader. To commemorate the centenary of the RAF, the Mail salutes Britain’s bravest (and craziest) Spitfire pilot

At the window he quietly pushed it open and leaned out. With one end of the sheet rope tied to
a bed, he lowered it out, hoping desperately that it was long enough, but could not tell if it
reached the ground.
He leaned his chest on the windowsill and tried to winkle his legs out sideways. They seemed
fantastically clumsy, more than ever before, huge, disjointed and swollen.
Sweating, he took a hand off the rope to grab his right shin and bend the knee. Then, somehow,
he was through, legs dangling, hands clutching the rope on the windowsill.
He started easing himself down, hand under hand, reached a ledge and took a breather, then
eased himself off and went on down. Very gently his feet touched the flagstones.
Piece of cake, he thought, cursing the noise from his legs as he headed to the gates.
They were closed, so he forced a gap between them, just a foot or so, and squeezed through.
He made it, stepping out on to the cobbles of the road. On the other side, he saw the glowing
end of a cigarette.
A dark shadow whispered urgently ‘Dooglass?’ in a strong French accent. ‘Oui,’ he replied, and
the two of them moved off through the town, the clatter of his steel legs echoing into the
darkness.
They walked for 40 minutes, Bader limping, his right stump chafing badly. The leg had rubbed
the skin off his groin and every step was searing agony.
Stumbling and exhaus

The rigid foot of his right leg was hooked fast on something in the plane and holding him
in.
The broken Spitfire, dragging him by the leg, plunged down and spun and battered him, the wind
clawing at his flesh and cringing sightless eyeballs as it picked up speed to 400mph, then
500mph.
It went on, hurtling downwards, and all he could do was perch there, trapped in mid-air, timeless,
witless, helpless, doomed.
Suddenly he felt the steel and leather of his artificial leg snap. In a flash, the brain cleared and
he pulled the rip cord of his parachute, hearing a crack as it opened.
And then he was floating. High above, the sky was still blue, and right at his feet lay a veil of
cloud. He sank into it. That was the cloud at 4,000ft. Cutting it fine! Seconds later he saw the
earth, green and dappled, below him.
Something flapped in his face — his right trouser leg, split along the seam. Underneath gleamed
the white skin of his stump. The right leg had gone. How lucky, he thought, to have detachable
ones.
Otherwise he would have died a few seconds ago in the burning wreck of his cockpit.
He heard engine noises and turned in the harness. A Messerschmitt was flying straight at him,
but the pilot did not shoot. He turned and roared by, 50 yards away.
Grass and cornfields were lifting gently to meet him, stooks of corn and fences. Two peasants
in blue smocks leaned against a gate looking up and he felt absurdly self-conscious.
A woman carrying a pail in each hand stopped in a lane and stared up

As he pondered this problem, there were two events that demonstrated Bader’s fame even here
among his enemies.
First, the Germans told him that the British were indeed sending him a spare leg, and Field
Marshal Hermann Goering himself, head of the Luftwaffe, had approved it being dropped by
plane.
Second, he was invited to a local air base by General Adolf Galland, a renowned Luftwaffe ace
and clearly an admirer of his.
Bader was intrigued. It would be churlish to refuse, and in any case it brought a breath of the
chivalry lost from modern war.
And it was a chance to spy out the country, to see the other side, life on an enemy fighter station,
to weigh it up and compare.
The two duly met — Bader now back in his uniform — and chatted like old friends. They had
tea in the mess, with waiters in white coats bringing sandwiches and real English tea.
He reflected to himself that it could have been an RAF mess, except that all the other uniforms
were wrong.
Galland even allowed Bader to climb inside the cockpit of a Messerschmitt, which he did, hauling
himself on to the wing and swinging in unaided.

Meanwhile, over in France, Bader had visitors at his bedside — two young Luftwaffe pilots,
curious to see this warrior with no legs.
They told him: ‘Of course it would never be allowed in Germany.’
He asked for the wreckage of his plane to be searched in case his lost right leg was still there
and, failing that, for a message to go to England for a replacement to be sent. It was agreed.
Later, an officer returned, clicked his heels, saluted Bader and said: ‘Herr Wing Commander,
we have found your leg.’

He lost both his legs in a catastrophic pre-war flying accident and was told he would never walk,
or fly, again. Donning artificial legs, he fought to overcome his handicap.
Though reluctantly invalided out of the Air Force, he returned to operational duties when war
broke out in 1939, as Britain was in desperate need of fighter pilots.