Douglas Bader
Flying aceWikipedia
20
MENTIONS
7
EPISODES
6
PODCASTS
Search complete. 20 mentions across 7 episodes found for "Douglas Bader".
Oct 11, 2026
Robert LlewellynGUEST
My father was in the RAF.
Robert LlewellynGUEST
There was a guy called Douglas Bader, who was an incredibly successful fighter pilot, but he lost both his legs in flying accidents.
Robert LlewellynGUEST
But he still walked and he still flew.
Robert LlewellynGUEST
He eventually got shot down over Germany and had to leave one of his legs in the plane to get to...
Robert LlewellynGUEST
So I did this very specific, terrible impression of a severely disabled man which got a laugh, and then Doug stood up and walked towards me, and he's got a leg, and I went, I've got this up badly.
speaker_4SOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
This is not...
Robert LlewellynGUEST
Why did I do the Douglas Bader walk? And I was making squeaking sounds at the legs as I did it.
JohnHOST
What was it like working with Doug? Because didn't you get involved in a bit of writing for Red Dwarf?
Tail DraggerHOST
Check them out at aviationsoul.com. Now, 1928.
Tail DraggerHOST
Douglas Bader is eighteen years old when he earns a scholarship to the Royal Air Force College at Cranwell.
Tail DraggerHOST
He is, by every account, an exceptional cadet.
Tail DraggerHOST
Good athlete, natural leader, and in an aircraft, something beyond just skilled.
Tail DraggerHOST
September 1st, 1939, Germany rolls into Poland.
Tail DraggerHOST
Two days later, Britain is at war.
Tail DraggerHOST
Douglas Bader walked back into the Air Ministry.
Tail DraggerHOST
He had his logbook, he had his pre-accident flying record, he had his prosthetics, and he had the absolute conviction that he was going to fly again.
Steve WaddenhamGUEST
And you probably couldn't do that in a DB9.
Steve WaddenhamGUEST
Who was your colleague? Was it Douglas Bader? It was a lady, actually.
Steve WaddenhamGUEST
But she wasn't short.
Steve WaddenhamGUEST
No, it did the job.
Frances KeilandHOST
[upbeat music] Let's start off with a couple of reader-recommended titles.
Frances KeilandHOST
Faye wanted to recommend the, um, biography Reach for the Sky: the Story of Douglas Bader.
Frances KeilandHOST
Um, this is by Paul Brickhill.
Frances KeilandHOST
In 1931, at the age of twenty-one, Douglas Bader was the golden boy of the RAF.
Frances KeilandHOST
Excelling in everything he did, he represented the Royal Air Force in aerobatics, aerobatics displays, played rugby for Harlequins, and was tipped to be the next England fly-half.
Frances KeilandHOST
But one afternoon in December, all his ambitions came to an abrupt end when he crashed his plane doing a particularly difficult and illegal aerobatic trick.
Frances KeilandHOST
His injuries were so bad that surgeons were forced to amputate both legs to save his life.
Frances KeilandHOST
Douglas Bader did not fly again until the outbreak of the Second World War, when his undoubted skill in the air was enough to convince a desperate air force to give him his own squadron.
Brandon HollarGUEST
I, I, I think of a, uh, a story I read about a man.
Brandon HollarGUEST
His name was Douglas Bader.
Brandon HollarGUEST
Douglas Bader, this was, um, like 1935, '36.
Brandon HollarGUEST
He, he wanted to be a pilot in the Royal Air Force, and he, he signed up, went and started flying planes for the Royal Air Force in England and...
Brandon HollarGUEST
But it wasn't wartime, and so they decided collectively that they were gonna learn how to do stunts and tricks in the plane and...
Brandon HollarGUEST
He did a, had a lot of great accomplishments, but all the while, his love was to fly in the Royal Air Force, and he kept appealing, and they kept rejecting.
Brandon HollarGUEST
But then World War II started, and the Royal Air Force started losing pilots faster than they could replace them.
Brandon HollarGUEST
And they reached out to Douglas Bader and said, "Do you still wanna do this?" He said, "Yeah, I wanna do it." They said, "Come, you gotta come and prove that you can." So he, he went and he proved to them that he could fly, and they, they, they put him in a fighter plane.
SeanHOST
Bader.
SeanHOST
About Douglas Bader.
SeanHOST
Because as I said to you at the beginning, I don't know...
SeanHOST
I don't think I've seen that,
Tail DraggerHOST
There were other names.
Tail DraggerHOST
Douglas Bader, who had lost both legs in a pre-war aerobatic accident and had bullied his way back into a cockpit through sheer force of will, commanded 242 Squadron in Hurricanes during the battle.
Tail DraggerHOST
Bader was famously aggressive, famously opinionated, and he believed the RAF was using its fighters too conservatively.
Tail DraggerHOST
He wanted big wing formations meeting the Germans with mass rather than piecemeal.