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Never heard this story before “In June 1942, after shooting down a Spitfire, a Luftwaffe pilot named Armin Faber landed his Fw 190A-3 at RAF Pembrey in Wales (

by LiamPa 6y ago

Never heard this story before “In June 1942, after shooting down a Spitfire, a Luftwaffe pilot named Armin Faber landed his Fw 190A-3 at RAF Pembrey in Wales (believing it to be France). Because of an unfortunate inability to distinguish the Bristol Channel from the English Channel said Armin let his plane get into the grubby hands of the RAF, with barely a scratch. Given its total superiority to any Allied fighter then in service, this unexpected gift was insanely valuable to the technical experts of the RAF. In fact, so desperate were the British to get their hands on one that a Commando raid had been planned to steal an Fw 190 from a French airfield.”

ceejayoz 6y ago
It’s really a pity planes of that era didn’t have cockpit audio recorders.
hanoz 6y ago
Because of an unfortunate inability to distinguish the Bristol Channel from the English Channel... Wouldn't it also take the inability to distinguish North from South to mistake Wales for France on that basis?
noir_lord 6y ago
There is a better one than that, one night two Me109’s got lost and landed at the same British airfield, they captured one of them in an armoured car when the pilot landed, realised his mistake they blocked the runway the other crashed. Bet the sentries got a shock when an enemy fighter landed and then taxied to the hanger waiting for ground crew. TP814 iirc, they called the branch that flew it (and other German planes) the Rafwaffe. Another good one is when two British agents stole an entire Ju88 with the latest radar of the time by holding the third crew member at gunpoint and flying it to Scotland. When it came to the spying the British had a ridiculous run of good results like that, we turned every single German agent in the UK and then had them do things like systematically lie about V1’s over shooting London by 60 miles, then faking craters so that when the Luftwaffe sent a reconnaissance plane over it looked legit, the Germans then altered the targeting such that the V1s landed short of their target. For all that people vaunt the Nazi’s for their advanced technology it’s actually a much more mixed picture, the cavity magnetron was discovered and perfected in the UK then taken to the US because we didn’t have the resources to build them at scale, German radar output 40W with a klystron, the cavity magnetron could output 25KW. It completely changed the picture for night interceptions. Also lots of people don’t know that Britain built and put intro production a proper radar based ground scanning system for targeting during WWII, it was called H2S and allowed accurate navigation and targeting. > Combined with intelligence gathered from the surviving crew, they learned it was a mapping system and were able to determine its method of operation. When they pieced one together from parts and saw the display of Berlin, near panic broke out in the Luftwaffe.
- thombat 6y ago
  > systematically lie about V1’s over shooting London by 60 miles, then faking craters so that when the Luftwaffe sent a reconnaissance plane over it looked legit, Interesting that after D-Day the Luftwaffe could still manage any reconnaissance flights over England. Where can I read more about this?

by LiamPa 6y ago

ceejayoz 6y ago

It’s really a pity planes of that era didn’t have cockpit audio recorders.

hanoz 6y ago

Because of an unfortunate inability to distinguish the Bristol Channel from the English Channel... Wouldn't it also take the inability to distinguish North from South to mistake Wales for France on that basis?

noir_lord 6y ago

There is a better one than that, one night two Me109’s got lost and landed at the same British airfield, they captured one of them in an armoured car when the pilot landed, realised his mistake they blocked the runway the other crashed. Bet the sentries got a shock when an enemy fighter landed and then taxied to the hanger waiting for ground crew. TP814 iirc, they called the branch that flew it (and other German planes) the Rafwaffe. Another good one is when two British agents stole an entire Ju88 with the latest radar of the time by holding the third crew member at gunpoint and flying it to Scotland. When it came to the spying the British had a ridiculous run of good results like that, we turned every single German agent in the UK and then had them do things like systematically lie about V1’s over shooting London by 60 miles, then faking craters so that when the Luftwaffe sent a reconnaissance plane over it looked legit, the Germans then altered the targeting such that the V1s landed short of their target. For all that people vaunt the Nazi’s for their advanced technology it’s actually a much more mixed picture, the cavity magnetron was discovered and perfected in the UK then taken to the US because we didn’t have the resources to build them at scale, German radar output 40W with a klystron, the cavity magnetron could output 25KW. It completely changed the picture for night interceptions. Also lots of people don’t know that Britain built and put intro production a proper radar based ground scanning system for targeting during WWII, it was called H2S and allowed accurate navigation and targeting. > Combined with intelligence gathered from the surviving crew, they learned it was a mapping system and were able to determine its method of operation. When they pieced one together from parts and saw the display of Berlin, near panic broke out in the Luftwaffe.

thombat 6y ago
> systematically lie about V1’s over shooting London by 60 miles, then faking craters so that when the Luftwaffe sent a reconnaissance plane over it looked legit, Interesting that after D-Day the Luftwaffe could still manage any reconnaissance flights over England. Where can I read more about this?