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Pilot Accidentally Lands in Enemy Airfield and Other Historic Mistakes

Khalid Elhassan October 5, 2020 31 min

Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Würger - Focke-Wulf — Fw 190 dogfighting a Spitfire over the English Channel. Pintrest

34. Oops – Wrong Way

Armin Faber’s home base, Morlaix in Brittany, and RAF Pembrey in Britain, where he landed. Square Space

Armin Faber and his fellow Germans got the better of the Spitfires, shooting down seven for the loss of only two Fw 190s. During the fight, Faber a Spitfire got on Faber’s tail. To shake it off, he flew north, and ended up over Devon, in England. Eventually, Faber managed to turn on and shoot down the pursuing fighter. By then, he was close to the Bristol Channel, north of Devon and separating it from Wales.

Faber was thoroughly disoriented by his narrow escape from the Spitfire. He mistook the Bristol Channel separating Devon from Wales for the English Channel separating England from France. He also mistook north for south. Instead of flying south across the English Channel towards France, he flew north across the Bristol Channel to Wales. That was not even his biggest oops of the day.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.