- His family moved around a fair bit during his childhood. He was born in St John's Wood in London but lived in the Isle of Man, Doncaster, Kew and even India for a year.
- He discovered shooting long before joining the military. There were a couple of incidents in his youth involving air guns - he shot at a local lady through her bathroom window, and shot his brother Derick in the shoulder during an argument. After that, he was sent to a strict boarding school.
- At school, his aggressive energy was channelled into sports - he played rugby and cricket, and continued to do so after he joined the Air Force. Not only did he play for the Air Force Team against the Army and Royal Navy, but he also played cricket while he was a prisoner of war.
- He left school at 18 and joined the RAF as a cadet. In his early days, he came close to being expelled, not only because he did badly in his exams, coming 19th out of 21, but also because he was always getting caught speeding and racing with motorbikes and cars, activities that were banned for cadets. However, his commanding officer gave him a talking to, and he went on to learn to fly, making his first solo flight in 1929. His daredevil antics and proclivity for breaking the rules didn't stop, however. Only now, he was doing dangerous and forbidden stunts in aeroplanes. He ignored safety rules forbidding aerobatics below 2,000 feet and was warned he'd face a court martial if he persisted. Nevertheless, he and flying partner Harry Day won a pairs contest at Hendon Air Show.
- In December 1931 while training for the next Hendon Air Show, he accepted a dare and performed some risky low flying aerobatics. His luck ran out that day - the wing of his plane touched the ground and he crashed. He survived, but as a result of his injuries, both his legs had to be amputated. His logbook entry describing the incident read simply: "Crashed slow-rolling near ground. Bad show."
- There followed a long convalescence during which he was fitted with artificial legs and learned to drive a modified car, play golf, dance and even fly a plane. While he passed an RAF test in 1933 proving he could still fly competently, the regulations didn't cover the situation where a pilot had lost both legs, so he was invalided out of the RAF. He took an office job and got married to a woman named Thelma Edwards. She died of cancer in 1971, and Bader married a second time, to Joan Murray.
- He never gave up on his ambition to fly again, though, especially as tensions in Europe began to escalate towards the end of the 1930s. He kept requesting to be declared fit to fly and took refresher courses and eventually, his efforts paid off and he was accepted, at the age of 29, to train to fly Spitfires and Hurricanes. In fact, it may even have been the case that his disability gave him an advantage, because it was common for pilots to pass out when pulling high g-forces when the Blood from their Brains drained to their legs. Since Bader didn't have legs, he'd stay conscious for longer.
- His radio call sign was "Dogsbody", based on his initials, D.B.
- His last combat was in August 1941, when he got separated from the rest of his section and encountered a squadron of German aircraft. In the ensuing fight it's thought Bader collided with one of them during manoevres to avoid them. Bader tried to bail out but one of his prosthetic legs was stuck. However, when he released his parachute, the straps broke under the strain and he managed to escape. At least, that's what Bader's own account said, but none of the German accounts of victories that day matched. His plane was never found and he was captured by the Germans - who treated him with respect and even allowed a British aircraft to fly over and drop off a new prosthetic leg for him. Even so he made so many escape attempts that the Germans threatened to take his legs off him.
- After the war, he considered standing as an MP but despised how veterans were treated by all the main parties and went to work for Shell instead. This job had the perk that he got to fly aircraft when travelling on business. He was technical advisor to the film, Battle of Britain.
Settling the Score
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A Tale of Two Sisters
During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.
Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.
As Jessica puts the first part of her revenge plan in motion, she finds herself with an agonising decision to make. Before she can decide, the Alliance come for her, determined to make her do their bidding. This time, it's the Alliance who leave her, crippled and at the mercy of the Warner family, who have no idea who the Alliance's Black Rose really is.
Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?
Jessica's older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?
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