Gower to Pembrey Coast


Gower to Pembrey

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On 1st November, 1887, this ship, The Helvetia, was struck

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by a terrible storm which swept along the coast of South Wales.

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Now the skeletal ribs rise from their watery grave every low tide

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to reveal the remains of a hull once laden with a cargo of wood.

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The Helvetia was an honest trader that fell foul of the weather.

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The same wild shores which wrecked Helvetia were used by other vessels

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for a much more sinister and profitable purpose -

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smuggling.

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I'm searching for hard evidence of the smugglers

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who once stalked this coast.

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Surely they couldn't cover their tracks completely?

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Contraband travelled by sea, and so am I, with the crew of the Olga.

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Boats like this were built for speed.

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She's a Bristol Channel pilot cutter

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whose legal trade was to guide bigger ships safely to port.

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But such sleek lines and yards of sail also made boats like this

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ideal for a profitable sideline.

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How suitable would a pilot cutter like this have been to smugglers?

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Very good. There's a lot of space down below, lot of contact

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with all the trade ships coming in, and it would have beached nicely

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because it's got a nice flat bottom,

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and the boat actually has legs which it uses to stand on the beach.

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This is actually the Olga.

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-So the legs are stopping the ship from falling over?

-Yeah.

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Although the boat was capable, if it was muddy,

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to stand on her own without the legs. She'd stand upright.

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But that means pilot cutters could use any part of the coast they wanted.

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Any part of the coastline they wanted to, yeah.

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Flat-bottomed vessels like this were perfectly suited to the bays and coves of Gower,

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which has plenty of spots

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to beach a boat with an illegal haul.

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The peak years for smuggling were around 1800.

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To fund the Napoleonic Wars, communities were heavily taxed on everyday goods.

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Smugglers' boats bulged with basics like salt, soap and tea,

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as well as alcohol and tobacco.

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In lawless areas like Gower,

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violent criminal gangs roamed and the customs men were heavily armed too.

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Museum curator Steve Butler

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has brought some of the tools of the trade.

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-My goodness.

-This is a blunderbuss.

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This is a very vicious-looking weapon.

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The blunderbuss was designed to fire shot over a short distance

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in a broad spread.

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-You wouldn't want to be hit by anything coming out of this.

-Absolutely not.

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We have your flintlock pistol, and once they were fired, of course,

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at which point, what else could they do with them?

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In close-quarter fighting,

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-they'd use them as a club, hence they were so strongly-built.

-That way round?

-That way round,

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-big butt-end here on the end of the handle.

-This is all bound in brass.

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And for very obvious reasons, that could do some serious damage.

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And what you're describing here, Steve, you're describing a war zone.

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It is largely a war zone, and it was almost out of control.

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Armed to the teeth in fast boats, you can see how the smugglers

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kept one step ahead of customs.

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But they couldn't stay at sea for ever.

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They had to land their contraband somewhere.

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Surely the smugglers had to have hidey-holes along this coast.

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Perhaps one of the storerooms is in a secluded cliff near Port Eynon.

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Below me is one of the most mysterious structures on the coast of Wales.

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Wow, look at that.

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This is Culver Hole.

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It's so tightly-packed into the rock, it almost looks natural.

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As front doors go, this is fairly inaccessible.

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I've never seen anything quite like it.

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It's built like a castle. We've got these very strange-shaped windows above.

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There are no floors in it.

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Look at these stone niches, lots of them.

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I'm hoping to find out more from National Trust warden Sian Musgrave.

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-Hi, Sian, very good to meet you.

-Hi, Nick, and you.

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Now, can you tell me, what is this peculiar building?

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It's very inaccessible, so it's a great hiding place.

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Would it have been used by smugglers, do you think?

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I think there's a high degree of probability that it was used by smugglers.

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When the tide comes in, you can get a boat right in.

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And inside, there's what appears to be a tunnel leading out from the back wall.

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Yeah, there's a small tunnel and a little chamber,

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which again leads us to think that it could have been used to keep things

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out of the customs men's reach.

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The highpoint of smuggling was about 200 years ago.

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But this structure looks much older, medieval even.

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And the old English name Culver Hole suggests an earlier use.

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Culver is an old word which means pigeon. It's a pigeon house.

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It's actually a medieval dovecote.

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So that's what those rectangular niches are?

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Yeah, they were built as an integrated part of the structure

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so that the pigeons could go in and nest, so they'd encourage the populations to multiply

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and then it would serve as food,

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and they'd take the eggs as well as the meat.

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So Culver Hole was originally a coastal larder many centuries ago,

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when pigeon meat was a prized foodstuff.

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But there's layer upon layer of history here.

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I can easily believe that much later on,

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it was converted to a hidey-hole for contraband.

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Giant pigeon loft, or secret smugglers' lair?

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A bit of both, I reckon.

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Hard evidence, it seems, is always elusive.

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Smugglers take their secrets to the grave.

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Gower has seen bad guys circling around its seas for centuries,

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but in 1940, the bandits were airborne.

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Dogfights raged in the skies above the Bristol Channel.

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Ports and munitions factories in South Wales were tempting targets

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for German bombers, so Pembrey became an important Battle of Britain airfield.

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It wasn't unknown for famous fighter aces

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to land here at Pembrey, but on June 23rd, 1942,

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the surprise arrival of one flyer caused quite a stir.

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A German pilot landed at this Welsh airfield in a very special plane.

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The airman was Oberleutnant Armin Faber, an experienced Luftwaffe pilot.

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Following a dogfight over the Bristol Channel,

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Faber put his top-secret plane down at Pembrey.

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Bold as brass, the enemy fighter was taxiing along this tarmac,

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causing Sergeant Charles Jeffreys to spring into action.

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It's said that Sergeant Jeffreys

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grabbed the first weapon that came to hand - a flare gun, as it happens.

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He dashed down the steps of the control tower over there

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and out onto the runway, where he threw himself

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across the wing of the German fighter, thereby capturing the pilot

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and, more importantly, his plane.

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And what a prize it was - this terrifying new weapon of war,

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the Focke-Wulf 190, the scourge of the Spitfires.

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Despite their dominance early in the war,

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Spitfires no longer had the upper hand.

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The FW 190 was christened the Butcher Bird by the allied pilots, and it lived up to its name.

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In the early months of 1942, the RAF lost scores of Spitfires.

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The Butcher Bird was on a killing spree.

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What made the Focke-Wulf 190 such a formidable foe was a mystery,

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so the Allies couldn't believe their luck when Armin Faber landed one on the Welsh coast.

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To understand what the RAF pilots wanted to learn about

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the captured German fighter, and to appreciate the performance edge

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that made Faber's plane so deadly in his dogfight over the British coast, I'm going up myself.

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-Is it looking safe, Chris?

-Hey, Neil, it's looking great, yeah. Good to see you.

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Yeah. So, what will a plane like this teach me about the Focke-Wulf?

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Well, what it's going to simulate

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is the agility and the speed of the Focke-Wulf.

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Although it's not as big an aeroplane,

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it's got that agility and it's got that punch and speed that the Focke-Wulf had

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that was making it special and making it a real competitor, you know -

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better than the Spitfires at the time.

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So my pilot will fly to mimic the performance of a Focke-Wulf 190 up against a Spitfire.

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For me, it's just a game. For airmen in the Second World War, it was a fight to the death.

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-How are you feeling?

-I feel fine.

-Brilliant.

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Well, it's a combination of fine and terrified.

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My plane's manoeuvring like the FW 190 -

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faster, and better in a roll or dive, compared to my opponent flying like a Spitfire.

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We're in the Focke-Wulf and we're trying to shoot this guy down.

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Here we go, we're going to pass down his right-hand side.

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Oh, I can take him, I can take him.

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This is the fly-through.

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Even in this mock dogfight,

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I can see how the superior agility, firepower,

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and visibility from Armin Faber's plane gave him a deadly advantage.

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-I've got him.

-One visual.

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Here we go, next pass.

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Visual. Guns, guns, guns.

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There he is, follow him down.

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In 1942, Luftwaffe pilot Faber

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did a wing-waggle over Pembrey airfield

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to celebrate victory. And then, to everyone's astonishment,

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his Focke-Wulf 190 landed on Welsh tarmac!

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So why would an experienced German pilot

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gift his top-secret fighter plane to the Allies?

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There were theories that Armin Faber had switched sides,

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or that in the heat of battle he was disorientated and lost his bearings.

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In a dogfight over the English Channel, he'd shot down a Spitfire.

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Then Faber drifted towards the Bristol Channel,

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downing another Spitfire.

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Confused by combat, thinking he was back over occupied France,

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Faber mistakenly landed at Pembrey.

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Or so one theory goes.

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Time to draft in Peter Murton from the Imperial War Museum.

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How likely do you think it is that an experienced pilot would get lost under those circumstances?

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I have to suggest that an experienced Luftwaffe fighter pilot,

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who is well used to doing aerobatics

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and high joule manoeuvres in a dogfight would not

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become disorientated quite so quickly as perhaps you've experienced today.

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So as far as you're concerned, what really happened?

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He realised there was no chance of him backtracking

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and getting back across country and across the English channel.

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There was an umbrella of Spitfires

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waiting to hack him out of the sky or forcing him lower and lower

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to the ground, but apart from that, he was short of fuel.

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So, really, it was pure self-preservation?

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Yeah, most certainly. He decided that the only way that he was going to survive

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was to pick the nearest aerodrome on UK territory and land.

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Fighter command have captured a nice new specimen of Germany's latest fighter, the Focke-Wulf 190...

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Armin Faber's plane

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was repainted in RAF colours and tested to destruction.

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As a result, future Marks of Spitfire were designed with modified wings

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and bigger engines, to regain their edge in the skies.

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Armin Faber became a prisoner and survived the war after landing here at Pembrey.

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The events of that day in 1942 also meant countless

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Allied pilots survived, thanks to their improved planes.

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