{"id":96,"date":"2006-08-30T07:44:40","date_gmt":"2006-08-30T06:44:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=96"},"modified":"2006-08-30T07:44:40","modified_gmt":"2006-08-30T06:44:40","slug":"who-downed-douglas-bader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=96","title":{"rendered":"Who downed Douglas Bader?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My father was trained as an RAF fighter pilot towards the end of World War Two (although he was too young to see action) which is why I am called Roger. My wife&#8217;s father was the RAF&#8217;s most successful night intruder pilot and this weblog is called NightHawk in his honour (you can read his story <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk.html\">here<\/a>). So I have a lifelong interest in Second World War pilots and aircraft.<br \/>\nWhen I was a youngster, the fighter ace Douglas Bader was a hero of mine. I read the biography &#8220;Reach For The Sky&#8221; and saw the film of the same title (read my review <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/afilms.html#Reach\">here<\/a>). When I became older and more political, I realised that Bader was a very Right-wing individual and the gloss faded somewhat, but I always maintained an interest.<br \/>\nSo it was fascinating to see this week <a href=\"http:\/\/www.channel4.com\/history\/microsites\/H\/history\/a-b\/bader.html\">a Channel Four programme<\/a> entitled &#8220;Who downed Douglas Bader?&#8221; The aviation experts in the programme never found Bader&#8217;s Spitfire, but Andy Saunders did make an original conclusion on the downing of the fighter.<br \/>\nIn Paul Brickhill\u2019s biography, &#8220;Reach for the Sky&#8221; (1954), and in Bader\u2019s own 1973 autobiography, the war ace blamed a mid-air collision with a Messerschmitt 109, which he said had clipped his aircraft\u2019s tail. But his story has always raised questions, and recent research by Saunders now suggests that he may have been a victim of \u2018friendly fire\u2019, shot down by one of his fellow RAF pilots called Buck Casson after becoming detached from his own squadron.<br \/>\nYou can read a discussion about the programme <a href=\"http:\/\/forum.digitalspy.co.uk\/board\/showthread.php?t=455723\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My father was trained as an RAF fighter pilot towards the end of World War Two (although he was too young to see action) which is why I am called Roger. My wife&#8217;s father was the RAF&#8217;s most successful night intruder pilot and this weblog is called NightHawk in his honour (you can read his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}