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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

33. Oops – Wrong Air Force

Armin Faber’s Fw 190A, after it mistakenly landed in a British airfield. Wikimedia

When Armin Faber crossed the Bristol Channel into Wales, he thought that he had crossed the English Channel and was back over France. He turned towards the nearest airfield, RAF Pembrey, and performed a victory roll to celebrate his aerial victory. Then he lowered his wheels and made a smooth landing in front of astonished British observers. Grabbing the only weapon at hand, a flare pistol, Pembrey’s duty pilot, a Flight Sergeant Jeffreys, jumped on the Fw 190’s wing as Faber taxied to a stop, and took the German pilot prisoner.

Realizing just how big an oops he had committed, a despondent Faber unsuccessfully tried to kill himself. He ended up in a POW camp in Canada. The RAF took full advantage of the airplane he had gifted them – the only Fw 190 fighter captured intact by the Allies during the war. It was flown by British pilots, and thoroughly evaluated to examine its strengths and weaknesses. The results gave the Allies valuable intelligence on how to best counter the airplane that had bedeviled them for so long.

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.