Reach for the Sky is a 1956 British biographical film about aviator Douglas Bader, based on the 1954 biography of the same name by Paul Brickhill.

Despite a friendly reprimand from Air Vice-Marshal Halahan for his disregard for service discipline and flight rules, he successfully completes his training and is posted to No.

The wing tip of his bi-plane touches the ground during his flight and he crashes dramatically, and is clearly badly injured.

Mr Joyce, surgeon at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, has to amputate both legs to save Bader's life.

Improving morale and brazenly circumventing normal channels to obtain badly needed equipment, he makes the squadron operational again.

He then makes such a nuisance of himself to his jailers, he is repeatedly moved from one POW camp to another, finally ending up in Colditz Castle.

Lewis Gilbert said Daniel Angel wanted to buy the rights for the book even without having read it, before it had been published, because he sensed it was going to be a best seller.

Angel bought the film rights for £15,000 and showed the book to Lewis Gilbert while they were making The Sea Shall Not Have Them together.

[7] Lewis Gilbert said Douglas Bader was difficult to deal with and did not help at all during filming: When he read the script he said I had made a terrible hash of it because I'd cut out a lot of his friends.

[8]To depict the various Royal Air Force bases realistically, principal filming took place in Surrey at RAF Kenley, and around the town of Caterham.

Available wartime combat aircraft including Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire fighters were arranged to take on the aerial scenes.

[11][12] Because Bader had fallen out with Brickhill over the split of royalties from the book, he refused to attend the premiere, and only saw the film for the first time eleven years later, on television.

Bader recognised that the producers had deleted all those habits he displayed when on operations, particularly his prolific use of bad language.

Filmink later argued the film "became acknowledged as a classic, unfairly mocked by Gen-X critics who were forced to watch it on television too many times, and who forget that the film was made by people and for audiences who had been through that conflict, many of whom had seen people die, and could view it in proper context.

"[15] In the scene where Bader is attempting to rejoin the RAF at the beginning of the war, Stephenson's name and rank may be seen on the door from which Sanderson emerges.