Reach for the Sky: The Story of Douglas Bader, Legless Ace of the Baffle of Britain. . - Net Assessment - book review

Air & Space Power Journal,  Winter, 2002  by John H. Barnhill

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Reach for the Sky The Story of Douglas Bader, Legless Ace of the Battle of Britain by Paul Brickhill. Naval Institute Press (http://www.usni.org/usni.html), 2062 Generals Highway, Annapolis, Maryland 21401-6780, 2001, 396 pages, $17.95 (softcover).

Reach for the Sky first appeared in 1954, when Bader's name was still fresh. Unfortunately, this edition, part of the Naval Institute Press's Bluejacket Books series, includes no update; nothing that brings Bader's story to a conclusion; and nothing about his postwar career, humanitarian involvement, and knighthood. At his death in 1982, Sir Douglas Bader was a British legend-almost a saint.

Brickhill, who writes classic popular biography, defines the young Bader as a decent sort who got by with a little help from his friends--at least until he learned to fend for himself. As a child, he was a bit of an outsider, a loner. When his parents went to India, he was too small to accompany them. After they came back, his father went off to World War I and didn't return. Then his mother remarried, and as the stepson of a cleric, Bader had more talent than money. To prove himself, he developed a drive that attracted people who helped him, financially and otherwise, to fulfill his potential.

He was reasonably intelligent and a good student (when interested) but marginal in math, which he hated. Above all, Bader was a superb athlete, a star in all sports he chose. Although his first exposure to flying was casual, he quickly developed a passion for it and enrolled at Cranwell, the British military academy. Young Bader flourished in the clubby atmosphere typical of the Royal Air Force (RAF) between the wars, excelling at rugby, boxing, and cricket (in which he was scheduled to compete for England).

Then disaster struck. Not only an exceptional athlete, he also was a skilled pilot. But, like many young men of his generation, he was a daredevil who enjoyed aerobatics, regardless of the official prohibition of this practice, and in 1931 he crashed. He survived but lost one leg immediately and the other shortly thereafter to life-threatening gangrene. His career was over, and his story could have ended there as well.

But it didn't. He refused to use a cane, teaching himself to walk unaided on his two metal legs, dance, play squash and golf, and drive a car. Above all, he taught himself to fly again. The RAF wasn't all that keen on having him back since there wasn't much of a market for completely disabled former pilots. So he retired, went to work for Shell Oil Company, and got married. But he stagnated-flying lingered in his blood. When the war came, however, a bit of maneuvering and help from the old-boy network got him back into a cockpit.

After triumphing over adversity and regaining his destined place, the legless pilot then excelled as leader, fighter, and innovator. Bader rebuilt a demoralized squadron, devised new fighter tactics and formations, and fought gallantly in the Battle of Britain. After colliding with a German Me-109, he sat out the remaining three years as a prisoner of war at Colditz Castle, near Leipzig, Germany, repeatedly testing the reputation of the fortress as an escapeproof prison. At the conclusion of World War II, Bader returned to Shell (the downsized RAF had lost the clubby atmosphere) and spent time with other people without one or more limbs, motivating them not to let a handicap become a disability. Brickhill's book became a movie, and Bader wrote his autobiography in 1973.

Bader's is really a good story of determination, courage, and refusal to accept what others define as the limits of the possible. The absence of footnotes or a bibliography, unsurprising in a popular biography, is acceptable, but the failure of the publisher to add at least a preface or some other update of Bader's life is quite disappointing. Nevertheless, Naval Institute Press has made another classic readily available. And that is significant because Reach for the Sky is a story that everyone should read.

COPYRIGHT 2002 U.S. Air Force
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