But an arrogant, irrepressible manner was the sort of leadership quality needed in those dark days, surely?
I gather that, unlike Stanford Tuck, Douglas never made friends with his wartime enemies. During the filming of 'BoB' he was less than sycophantic towards 'Dolfo' Galland, I gather, when there was a gathering of ex-BoB pilots at the aerodrome where the film was being made. "You bŁoody huns - we won, you know" was reportedly his comment!
In later years he still enjoyed the odd wind-up. At a certain airport a spotty young security officer couldn't understand why a passenger thought it was highly amusing that the security machine was going bananas as he stepped through it - until an older, wiser security officer told the sprog who the passenger was and why the metal detector was going mad! It was, of course, Douglas!
At my UAS aerodrome (White Waltham), he used to fly G-APUB - a light twin. One day he landed and was mobbed by the ATC unit downstairs who were there for AEF flying. Though busy, he still found the time to chat to them about flying etc. before driving off. Unfortunately, one of the newer instructors didn't know this - all he saw was a big black car weaving through a flight line of Chipmunks with their engines running. So he picked up the phone to the Guard Room, ordered the barrier down and rushed off to administer a boll*cking! At the gate was Douglas - he wound the window down, smiled apologetically and said "Awfully sorry, old man, I know I shouldn't really have driven through your flight line but I was a bit late after chatting to all those cadets" Fg Off QFI just mumbled, saluted and watched as DB drove off!
On one squadron any luckless co-piglet crewed to fly with a certain greedy captain was always known as a 'Duggie B'. Why? Because he wasn't going to have any operating legs.......sorry, DB - aircrew humour!