LEGLESS PILOT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24372, 9 August 1940, Page 7

LEGLESS PILOT

SHOOTS DOWN DORNIER FORMER BRILLIANT ATHLETE (From Our Own Correspondent) LONDON, July 16. One of the most stirring stories of individual bravery and heroism to seize public imagination in the past few weeks was undoubtedly that. of the legless pilot who shot down a Dormer 17. His identity was not announced, by the Air Ministry, but it was quickly discovered. He is Flying-officer D. R. S. Bader, the 30-year-old son of Mrs Hobbs, wife of the rector of Sprotborough, near Doncaster. . Stocky, dark-haired, he faced a Brilliant career as a flier and an athlete when he was 21 years old. He was one of the most daring stunt aces. At Hendon Air Display in 1931 he and Flight-lieutenant H. M- Day thrilled the crowds with their synchronised aerobatics in two Glocester Gamecocks - ' He 'played Rugby for the R.A.F.. the Combined Services, and Surrey. An international cap was within his grasp. But in December, 1931, a Bristol Bulldog he was flying crashed from a slow roll at Woodley airfield, Reading. The engine was torn out by the impact. The rest of the plane ran on for a hundred yard?, then crumpled into a ball. Douglas Bader woke up in hospital to find that both legs had been amputated, one completely, the other at the knee.

From that day Flying-officer, Bader set himself the seemingly impossible task of flying again for the R.A.F. He made up his, mind that his artificial legs were to be no handicap to him. He refused ever to use a stick. He had his car adapted, and earned a living as representative of an oil company to nay for fresh flying lessons. Within nine months he was in the air again, a fully qualified civil pilot. Once again he danced, played squash, tennis, cricket. He even learned golf, a game he had never played before. In the meantime, he kept'his hand in by flying as many different types of plans as he could, and on the outbreak of war he re-enlisted with the R.A.r. They offered him a taxi-flying job, but he insisted to the Medical Board that he was fit for normal duties. "He kept at them until they passed him," a friend of the family said. "When they posted him to a fighter squadron he was the happiest man in the world."

He has already had one minor accident. His two metal legs were badly bent. An artificer on the airfield straightened them, and half an hour later he was in the air. "His spirit is dauntless," said lis mother. Mrs Hobbs, when she learned of her son's latest success.

" I saw him during the time of his great suffering, after the flying crash six years ago, when both his legs had to be amputated." she said. "We saw him gradually get back to health and then, by means of wonderful willpower, he gained such control over the two artificial limbs that were made for him, that he learned to drive a car and to play games. "Instead of being a useless cripple, I now have the pride of seeing him once more flying in the sky. Then* >'s nothing I can tell you about his exploit. . . I would say no more than that he is a very gallant gentleman." In 1937 Flying-officer Bader married Miss Olive Thelma Exley Edwards, who=e father holds a post at the Air Ministry.