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The Army has the right idea...

By Dusty (AKA Attila of Argghhh!) on April 27, 2005 | | Comments (16)

John's post of the leg-challenged trooper reminded me of someone whose memory I respect perhaps more than anyone in combat aviation, then or now.

PLEASE read the whole thing...

Bader could never do that today...too many restrictions would never let him get anywhere near a jet...which, actually, doesn't make a lot of sense. If you don't have legs, you don't have to worry about blood pooling in the lower extremities during high-G maneuvering. The classic G-suit (Fast Pants, Speed Jeans, whatever you want to call 'em) wouldn't do you much good. However, comma, there is Combat Edge, so Bader could be fitted with equipment to keep the rest of his circulatory system ready for 9-G engagements.

I love the RAF. For one thing, they never, ever, ever lower their performance standards--not even for the Royals, I don't think--when it comes to training and qualifications. For another thing, at least up to now, they have broken the code on aviation regulations in their national airspace. We had a saying in USAFE, "Britain was invented by God for pilots." Even though I'm a UK immigrant's son, I'm not biased, either...heh.

Need something? Just ask. Just stay the hell away from the Purple Routes (Royal purple...get it?) and you could do damn near anything you wanted. Couple that with the fact that UK bombing range controllers were paid by the amount of munitions expended, and you've just entered Hog Heaven (pun intended). At a minimum, we'd leave 106 projectiles, per aircraft, on the range (6 BDUs and 100 rounds of 30mm TP) so if the Ranger heard a 4-ship of Hogs checking in on his freq (I'm not making this up) he'd kick other flights off the range (even fellow Brits) to make sure we got on.

I KNOW there are active duty amputees back out there in the "Rack"...the Army has the right idea: warriors are warriors are warriors. Like sled dogs, race horses and other hard chargers, if you don't want to let them do what they were born and want to do, you may as well shoot 'em. (OK, not really, but you get my point.) Why can't we do that in the fighter community? It's a dumb question, I know, but one can always hope.

By the way, what the Bader site fails to mention is that he--being Bader--talked his captors into allowing a one-time, low-level delivery of a new set of legs by air over the prison camp. "Yeah, OK." says the Kommandant. So far, so good...then he uses them to escape. I wonder what the German Stalagluft guard's equivalent of "Cheeky Bastard!" is...

So, the reason he never got away for good until liberation by First Army was his legs being confiscated every night to avoid an embarrassing repeat of the first attempt.

...and THAT, dear readers, is why we win wars...

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16 Comments

By Barb on April 27, 2005 4:49 PM
Now there was a warrior :-) He didn't quit for anything, did he?!
 
By Neffi on April 27, 2005 5:35 PM
Bader was a personal hero of mine, growing up in England as I did. I can't remember the number of times I read Reach for the Sky... Shortly after the release of the film 'Battle of Britian' Bader made an appearance in Ipswich (can't remember the event), but I had a severe cold and couldn't go. I was devastated for months... Dusty, were you flying out of RAF Woodbridge?
 
By Instapilot on April 27, 2005 5:47 PM
Actually, I was out of Spangdahlem but flew in the UK whenever I could (standard for GE-based units). I did, however, work at RAF Mildenhall my last year in Europe but the flying I did was behind a desk...good news was we had a few Brits on the payroll so that kept it fun.
 
By Neffi on April 27, 2005 6:01 PM
My buddy Don and I used to go out to the 'old' part of Mildenhall, rooting around the revetments and bunkers- hoping to find something neat. Never did, though- this was before civilian metal detectors. He was stationed at Mildenhall; I was at Lakenheath
 
By Justthisguy on April 27, 2005 7:30 PM
Yeah, Neffi, read that book too, when a kid. Apparrently having the brakes on the stick in Britplanes was a great help. Slips, though, I wonder. I think the RAF insisted on dropping the legs during a regular bombing raid, so as not to appear to give "aid and comfort" by co-operating with the Reich too much.
 
By Neffi on April 27, 2005 8:41 PM
JTG, that's what the book sez- the legs were dropped in the course of a bombing raid. Also, it related that the crash whereby Bader lost his legs was the result of a head-on encounter with another aeroplane, rather than a 'solo' crash... Reach For the Sky was an earlier work- I wonder which version is accurate... perhaps the book had a touch of 'white-wash'?
 
By SangerM on April 27, 2005 9:48 PM
Not nearly the same, but the USAF has got a bit of a clue: Lt. Col. Andrew Lourake is flying now... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62915-2004Oct25.html Maybe he'll be the first of many... Good post, great story, I'd never heard of Bader, to my chagrin! Thanks!
 
By cw4billt on April 28, 2005 12:26 AM
During the Battle of Britain, Bader was queasy about the idea of being shot down over the Channel, bailing out and having his "tin legs" fill with water and drag him under to drown. He stuffed them full of ping-pong balls. The next day, he went on an intercept and climbed above 15,000 feet. There was a noise like 20mm cannon shells hitting the aircraft and his legs went flailing around the cockpit. He thought he'd been jumped by an Me-109 and was ready to bail out. Then he realized the reduced pressure had caused the ping-pong balls to explode. He never flew with them again...
 
By Neffi on April 28, 2005 7:14 AM
...can you imagine Bader telling that one in the O Mess? Bader- "... and it was only the bloody ping-pong balls rupturing in the lower air pressure!" [boos, groans, and cat-calls from assembled squadron mates] Bader- "No, really, lads... TINS!" ['gwan with ya' 'pull the other one, Doug' etc] Bader- "TINS, dammit..." heh
 
By Cricket on April 28, 2005 7:18 AM
Um, okay, I almost laughed but that isn't supposed to be funny until MANY MANY years after. Like, now, and only to other military people. We just watched the remake of "The Flight of the Phoenix" with Dennis Quaid and Eorache (she was the actress who played Eowyn in LOTR). I don't know how accurate the aerodynamics of the plane are, but there are at least two shots of the plane doing a 360 in the sand storm. If that was a Hollywood thing, it was pretty effective. Comments from the pilots?
 
By J.M. Heinrichs on April 28, 2005 8:48 AM
The movie version of "Reach for the Sky", with Kenneth More as Bader, is quite good. Especially the demo of why flying inverted at 10' AGL is not recommended if the aircraft is not familiar to the pilot. One of the Brit military magazines had an article indicating the Bader was the victim of friendly fire. Some interesting Bader stuff here. Cheers JMH
 
By Drew on April 28, 2005 1:29 PM
Give the AF time and maybe they'll come around. It's not like the Army has been doing this forever. Ten years ago, when it was determined that I could no longer run, I was stamped as useless to the armed forces and show the door. And I still had all my limbs.
 
By Justthisguy on April 28, 2005 6:27 PM
Remake? *REMAKE*?? Nooo!!!! It was perfect the first time. Only Jimmy Stewart could have done that part right! And.. And... GIRL COOTIES!
 
By Justthisguy on April 28, 2005 8:08 PM
Dang! The comment that this would have been, evaporated! I thought I'd saved it, but SaveAs ignored the writing in this box. Now what was I thinking?... Owhell, it was something about that really neat German nerd character, how he had Mad Skillz in thinking outside the box on account of being such an ingenious erudite forthright earnest honest geeky model-airplane designer person! There was something else I wrote, but I've forgotten it, alas! JoA, what did happen, there?
 
By Justthisguy on April 28, 2005 8:25 PM
Now I remember. It was a reply to JMH. I was regretting the death of Glen Sigafoose in an airshow, doing snap-rolls at zero feet. Apparently one of the wing tips went below zero for a moment, and that was all she wrote. He and his wife, Hazel, had his'n'hers Pitts Specials in which they did air shows. After he stuffed his, and self, into the ground, Hazel sold hers and the Pitts kit disappeared from the Sig Balsa catalog. Right now I just picked up an airplane and read the fading stamp, "SIG contest balsa; very light 4-6lb. stock" For you aviators: Glen and Hazel did manage to get the dangerous wires removed from the vicinity of the Montezuma, Iowa, Airport. (That's hard to do.) and it's now Sig Field, I believe. If I ever manage to escape this benighted God-Forsaken place, I think I might want to move to Montezuma and try for a job at one or the other of my two favorite business firms in the whole world, Brownell's and Sig!
 
By Jim Ewart on April 28, 2005 11:17 PM
Bader was my inspiration, my hero. I first read Reach for the Sky at age 12 and continued reading it until it was dogeared from use. I never lost my fascination with flight, although Vietnam tarnished it. Jets never appealed to me, but what I wouldn't have given to fly a Spitfire or a Hurricane in the Battle of Britain. Still, Huey's were a grand adventure and I did enjoy my all too brief encounter with them.