The Pilot Who Accidentally Landed in an Enemy Airfield
When the Luftwaffe’s Focke-Wulf Fw 190 first appeared in France in August, 1941, it came as an unpleasant surprise to Britain’s Royal Air Force. Except for turn radius, the new German plane was superior in just about every way to the RAF’s main frontline fighter at the time, the Spitfire Mk. V. Especially in low and medium altitude dogfights. The Fw 190 seized aerial superiority from the RAF for nearly a year, until the vastly improved Spitfire Mk. IX, introduced in July, 1942, restored parity. In the meantime, the British were desperate to get their hands on an Fw 190 to examine and figure out how to best fight it.
Aware of that, the Luftwaffe prohibited Fw 190 pilots from flying over Britain, lest one get shot down and give the British the opportunity to inspect the wreckage. Then in an epic blunder, a German pilot delivered an Fw 190 in pristine condition straight into the RAF’s hands. The odds of an enemy gifting you one of his most advanced weapons are pretty slim. Yet that is precisely what Oberleutnant Armin Faber did. In the summer of 1942, he landed his Fw 190A-3 at an RAF airfield in Britain, which he mistook for a German airfield in France. To add to his embarrassment, Faber had recently delivered written orders from Luftwaffe chief Herman Goering that prohibited Fw 190s from crossing the English Channel.