It is not often that a champion fighter pilot asks to look round one of our life-boats. In this picture, taken some time ago, but only recently made available to THE LIFE-BOAT, Group Captain Douglas Bader, C.B.E., D.S.O., D.F.C., the legless fighter pilot of World War II, is shown leaving the cockpit, not of his favourite Hurricane or Spitfire, but of the Padstow, Cornwall, life-boat James and Catherine Macfarlane.

Looking on is his late wife, Thelma, and (left) Mr. Gordon Elliott, the former coxswain. When, in 1941, the group captain's luck in the air finally ran out, he was not shot down: he was in an air-to-air collision with a Messerschmitt, fortunately over land, and succeeded in making a precarious parachute landing. During his visit to the Padstow area Group Captain Bader, who was full of praise for the work done by the life-boat service, left word that should the life-boat be launched he would 'scramble' with the crew..