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On 1st November, 1887, this ship, The Helvetia, was struck | 0:00:31 | 0:00:38 | |
by a terrible storm which swept along the coast of South Wales. | 0:00:38 | 0:00:43 | |
Now the skeletal ribs rise from their watery grave every low tide | 0:00:47 | 0:00:53 | |
to reveal the remains of a hull once laden with a cargo of wood. | 0:00:53 | 0:00:57 | |
The Helvetia was an honest trader that fell foul of the weather. | 0:00:57 | 0:01:02 | |
The same wild shores which wrecked Helvetia were used by other vessels | 0:01:02 | 0:01:07 | |
for a much more sinister and profitable purpose - | 0:01:07 | 0:01:11 | |
smuggling. | 0:01:11 | 0:01:14 | |
I'm searching for hard evidence of the smugglers | 0:01:15 | 0:01:17 | |
who once stalked this coast. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:19 | |
Surely they couldn't cover their tracks completely? | 0:01:19 | 0:01:24 | |
Contraband travelled by sea, and so am I, with the crew of the Olga. | 0:01:25 | 0:01:32 | |
Boats like this were built for speed. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:35 | |
She's a Bristol Channel pilot cutter | 0:01:35 | 0:01:38 | |
whose legal trade was to guide bigger ships safely to port. | 0:01:38 | 0:01:41 | |
But such sleek lines and yards of sail also made boats like this | 0:01:41 | 0:01:47 | |
ideal for a profitable sideline. | 0:01:47 | 0:01:50 | |
How suitable would a pilot cutter like this have been to smugglers? | 0:01:52 | 0:01:55 | |
Very good. There's a lot of space down below, lot of contact | 0:01:55 | 0:01:59 | |
with all the trade ships coming in, and it would have beached nicely | 0:01:59 | 0:02:04 | |
because it's got a nice flat bottom, | 0:02:04 | 0:02:07 | |
and the boat actually has legs which it uses to stand on the beach. | 0:02:07 | 0:02:12 | |
This is actually the Olga. | 0:02:12 | 0:02:13 | |
-So the legs are stopping the ship from falling over? -Yeah. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:16 | |
Although the boat was capable, if it was muddy, | 0:02:16 | 0:02:19 | |
to stand on her own without the legs. She'd stand upright. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:22 | |
But that means pilot cutters could use any part of the coast they wanted. | 0:02:22 | 0:02:25 | |
Any part of the coastline they wanted to, yeah. | 0:02:25 | 0:02:28 | |
Flat-bottomed vessels like this were perfectly suited to the bays and coves of Gower, | 0:02:28 | 0:02:34 | |
which has plenty of spots | 0:02:34 | 0:02:35 | |
to beach a boat with an illegal haul. | 0:02:35 | 0:02:37 | |
The peak years for smuggling were around 1800. | 0:02:37 | 0:02:41 | |
To fund the Napoleonic Wars, communities were heavily taxed on everyday goods. | 0:02:41 | 0:02:47 | |
Smugglers' boats bulged with basics like salt, soap and tea, | 0:02:47 | 0:02:52 | |
as well as alcohol and tobacco. | 0:02:52 | 0:02:55 | |
In lawless areas like Gower, | 0:02:56 | 0:02:58 | |
violent criminal gangs roamed and the customs men were heavily armed too. | 0:02:58 | 0:03:03 | |
Museum curator Steve Butler | 0:03:03 | 0:03:05 | |
has brought some of the tools of the trade. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:09 | |
-My goodness. -This is a blunderbuss. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:10 | |
This is a very vicious-looking weapon. | 0:03:10 | 0:03:13 | |
The blunderbuss was designed to fire shot over a short distance | 0:03:13 | 0:03:16 | |
in a broad spread. | 0:03:16 | 0:03:19 | |
-You wouldn't want to be hit by anything coming out of this. -Absolutely not. | 0:03:19 | 0:03:23 | |
We have your flintlock pistol, and once they were fired, of course, | 0:03:23 | 0:03:27 | |
at which point, what else could they do with them? | 0:03:27 | 0:03:31 | |
In close-quarter fighting, | 0:03:31 | 0:03:32 | |
-they'd use them as a club, hence they were so strongly-built. -That way round? -That way round, | 0:03:32 | 0:03:37 | |
-big butt-end here on the end of the handle. -This is all bound in brass. | 0:03:37 | 0:03:41 | |
And for very obvious reasons, that could do some serious damage. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:44 | |
And what you're describing here, Steve, you're describing a war zone. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:48 | |
It is largely a war zone, and it was almost out of control. | 0:03:48 | 0:03:51 | |
Armed to the teeth in fast boats, you can see how the smugglers | 0:03:51 | 0:03:56 | |
kept one step ahead of customs. | 0:03:56 | 0:03:59 | |
But they couldn't stay at sea for ever. | 0:03:59 | 0:04:01 | |
They had to land their contraband somewhere. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:05 | |
Surely the smugglers had to have hidey-holes along this coast. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:10 | |
Perhaps one of the storerooms is in a secluded cliff near Port Eynon. | 0:04:10 | 0:04:15 | |
Below me is one of the most mysterious structures on the coast of Wales. | 0:04:17 | 0:04:22 | |
Wow, look at that. | 0:04:30 | 0:04:32 | |
This is Culver Hole. | 0:04:34 | 0:04:37 | |
It's so tightly-packed into the rock, it almost looks natural. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:42 | |
As front doors go, this is fairly inaccessible. | 0:04:47 | 0:04:50 | |
I've never seen anything quite like it. | 0:04:50 | 0:04:52 | |
It's built like a castle. We've got these very strange-shaped windows above. | 0:04:52 | 0:04:57 | |
There are no floors in it. | 0:04:57 | 0:05:00 | |
Look at these stone niches, lots of them. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:03 | |
I'm hoping to find out more from National Trust warden Sian Musgrave. | 0:05:13 | 0:05:17 | |
-Hi, Sian, very good to meet you. -Hi, Nick, and you. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:20 | |
Now, can you tell me, what is this peculiar building? | 0:05:20 | 0:05:24 | |
It's very inaccessible, so it's a great hiding place. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:27 | |
Would it have been used by smugglers, do you think? | 0:05:27 | 0:05:30 | |
I think there's a high degree of probability that it was used by smugglers. | 0:05:30 | 0:05:34 | |
When the tide comes in, you can get a boat right in. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:36 | |
And inside, there's what appears to be a tunnel leading out from the back wall. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:41 | |
Yeah, there's a small tunnel and a little chamber, | 0:05:41 | 0:05:45 | |
which again leads us to think that it could have been used to keep things | 0:05:45 | 0:05:49 | |
out of the customs men's reach. | 0:05:49 | 0:05:51 | |
The highpoint of smuggling was about 200 years ago. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:54 | |
But this structure looks much older, medieval even. | 0:05:54 | 0:06:00 | |
And the old English name Culver Hole suggests an earlier use. | 0:06:00 | 0:06:06 | |
Culver is an old word which means pigeon. It's a pigeon house. | 0:06:06 | 0:06:09 | |
It's actually a medieval dovecote. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:13 | |
So that's what those rectangular niches are? | 0:06:13 | 0:06:16 | |
Yeah, they were built as an integrated part of the structure | 0:06:16 | 0:06:19 | |
so that the pigeons could go in and nest, so they'd encourage the populations to multiply | 0:06:19 | 0:06:24 | |
and then it would serve as food, | 0:06:24 | 0:06:26 | |
and they'd take the eggs as well as the meat. | 0:06:26 | 0:06:28 | |
So Culver Hole was originally a coastal larder many centuries ago, | 0:06:28 | 0:06:33 | |
when pigeon meat was a prized foodstuff. | 0:06:33 | 0:06:35 | |
But there's layer upon layer of history here. | 0:06:35 | 0:06:39 | |
I can easily believe that much later on, | 0:06:39 | 0:06:41 | |
it was converted to a hidey-hole for contraband. | 0:06:41 | 0:06:46 | |
Giant pigeon loft, or secret smugglers' lair? | 0:06:46 | 0:06:49 | |
A bit of both, I reckon. | 0:06:49 | 0:06:52 | |
Hard evidence, it seems, is always elusive. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:55 | |
Smugglers take their secrets to the grave. | 0:06:55 | 0:06:59 | |
Gower has seen bad guys circling around its seas for centuries, | 0:07:07 | 0:07:13 | |
but in 1940, the bandits were airborne. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:16 | |
Dogfights raged in the skies above the Bristol Channel. | 0:07:16 | 0:07:21 | |
Ports and munitions factories in South Wales were tempting targets | 0:07:21 | 0:07:25 | |
for German bombers, so Pembrey became an important Battle of Britain airfield. | 0:07:25 | 0:07:31 | |
It wasn't unknown for famous fighter aces | 0:07:31 | 0:07:34 | |
to land here at Pembrey, but on June 23rd, 1942, | 0:07:34 | 0:07:38 | |
the surprise arrival of one flyer caused quite a stir. | 0:07:38 | 0:07:41 | |
A German pilot landed at this Welsh airfield in a very special plane. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:48 | |
The airman was Oberleutnant Armin Faber, an experienced Luftwaffe pilot. | 0:07:48 | 0:07:54 | |
Following a dogfight over the Bristol Channel, | 0:07:54 | 0:07:57 | |
Faber put his top-secret plane down at Pembrey. | 0:07:57 | 0:08:00 | |
Bold as brass, the enemy fighter was taxiing along this tarmac, | 0:08:00 | 0:08:06 | |
causing Sergeant Charles Jeffreys to spring into action. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:11 | |
It's said that Sergeant Jeffreys | 0:08:11 | 0:08:13 | |
grabbed the first weapon that came to hand - a flare gun, as it happens. | 0:08:13 | 0:08:16 | |
He dashed down the steps of the control tower over there | 0:08:16 | 0:08:19 | |
and out onto the runway, where he threw himself | 0:08:19 | 0:08:22 | |
across the wing of the German fighter, thereby capturing the pilot | 0:08:22 | 0:08:26 | |
and, more importantly, his plane. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:30 | |
And what a prize it was - this terrifying new weapon of war, | 0:08:30 | 0:08:34 | |
the Focke-Wulf 190, the scourge of the Spitfires. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:39 | |
Despite their dominance early in the war, | 0:08:39 | 0:08:42 | |
Spitfires no longer had the upper hand. | 0:08:42 | 0:08:46 | |
The FW 190 was christened the Butcher Bird by the allied pilots, and it lived up to its name. | 0:08:49 | 0:08:55 | |
In the early months of 1942, the RAF lost scores of Spitfires. | 0:08:55 | 0:09:00 | |
The Butcher Bird was on a killing spree. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:04 | |
What made the Focke-Wulf 190 such a formidable foe was a mystery, | 0:09:04 | 0:09:09 | |
so the Allies couldn't believe their luck when Armin Faber landed one on the Welsh coast. | 0:09:09 | 0:09:15 | |
To understand what the RAF pilots wanted to learn about | 0:09:15 | 0:09:18 | |
the captured German fighter, and to appreciate the performance edge | 0:09:18 | 0:09:23 | |
that made Faber's plane so deadly in his dogfight over the British coast, I'm going up myself. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:29 | |
-Is it looking safe, Chris? -Hey, Neil, it's looking great, yeah. Good to see you. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:37 | |
Yeah. So, what will a plane like this teach me about the Focke-Wulf? | 0:09:37 | 0:09:43 | |
Well, what it's going to simulate | 0:09:43 | 0:09:45 | |
is the agility and the speed of the Focke-Wulf. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:49 | |
Although it's not as big an aeroplane, | 0:09:49 | 0:09:52 | |
it's got that agility and it's got that punch and speed that the Focke-Wulf had | 0:09:52 | 0:09:56 | |
that was making it special and making it a real competitor, you know - | 0:09:56 | 0:10:01 | |
better than the Spitfires at the time. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:03 | |
So my pilot will fly to mimic the performance of a Focke-Wulf 190 up against a Spitfire. | 0:10:07 | 0:10:13 | |
For me, it's just a game. For airmen in the Second World War, it was a fight to the death. | 0:10:21 | 0:10:27 | |
-How are you feeling? -I feel fine. -Brilliant. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:29 | |
Well, it's a combination of fine and terrified. | 0:10:29 | 0:10:34 | |
My plane's manoeuvring like the FW 190 - | 0:10:34 | 0:10:36 | |
faster, and better in a roll or dive, compared to my opponent flying like a Spitfire. | 0:10:36 | 0:10:43 | |
We're in the Focke-Wulf and we're trying to shoot this guy down. | 0:10:43 | 0:10:46 | |
Here we go, we're going to pass down his right-hand side. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:51 | |
Oh, I can take him, I can take him. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:53 | |
This is the fly-through. | 0:10:53 | 0:10:55 | |
Even in this mock dogfight, | 0:10:59 | 0:11:01 | |
I can see how the superior agility, firepower, | 0:11:01 | 0:11:04 | |
and visibility from Armin Faber's plane gave him a deadly advantage. | 0:11:04 | 0:11:09 | |
-I've got him. -One visual. | 0:11:09 | 0:11:10 | |
Here we go, next pass. | 0:11:11 | 0:11:14 | |
Visual. Guns, guns, guns. | 0:11:14 | 0:11:17 | |
There he is, follow him down. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:22 | |
In 1942, Luftwaffe pilot Faber | 0:11:24 | 0:11:26 | |
did a wing-waggle over Pembrey airfield | 0:11:26 | 0:11:29 | |
to celebrate victory. And then, to everyone's astonishment, | 0:11:29 | 0:11:34 | |
his Focke-Wulf 190 landed on Welsh tarmac! | 0:11:34 | 0:11:38 | |
So why would an experienced German pilot | 0:11:45 | 0:11:48 | |
gift his top-secret fighter plane to the Allies? | 0:11:48 | 0:11:51 | |
There were theories that Armin Faber had switched sides, | 0:11:51 | 0:11:55 | |
or that in the heat of battle he was disorientated and lost his bearings. | 0:11:55 | 0:11:59 | |
In a dogfight over the English Channel, he'd shot down a Spitfire. | 0:11:59 | 0:12:03 | |
Then Faber drifted towards the Bristol Channel, | 0:12:03 | 0:12:06 | |
downing another Spitfire. | 0:12:06 | 0:12:07 | |
Confused by combat, thinking he was back over occupied France, | 0:12:07 | 0:12:11 | |
Faber mistakenly landed at Pembrey. | 0:12:11 | 0:12:13 | |
Or so one theory goes. | 0:12:13 | 0:12:16 | |
Time to draft in Peter Murton from the Imperial War Museum. | 0:12:16 | 0:12:21 | |
How likely do you think it is that an experienced pilot would get lost under those circumstances? | 0:12:21 | 0:12:28 | |
I have to suggest that an experienced Luftwaffe fighter pilot, | 0:12:28 | 0:12:32 | |
who is well used to doing aerobatics | 0:12:32 | 0:12:36 | |
and high joule manoeuvres in a dogfight would not | 0:12:36 | 0:12:40 | |
become disorientated quite so quickly as perhaps you've experienced today. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:44 | |
So as far as you're concerned, what really happened? | 0:12:44 | 0:12:48 | |
He realised there was no chance of him backtracking | 0:12:48 | 0:12:51 | |
and getting back across country and across the English channel. | 0:12:51 | 0:12:55 | |
There was an umbrella of Spitfires | 0:12:55 | 0:12:57 | |
waiting to hack him out of the sky or forcing him lower and lower | 0:12:57 | 0:13:00 | |
to the ground, but apart from that, he was short of fuel. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:05 | |
So, really, it was pure self-preservation? | 0:13:05 | 0:13:08 | |
Yeah, most certainly. He decided that the only way that he was going to survive | 0:13:08 | 0:13:13 | |
was to pick the nearest aerodrome on UK territory and land. | 0:13:13 | 0:13:20 | |
Fighter command have captured a nice new specimen of Germany's latest fighter, the Focke-Wulf 190... | 0:13:20 | 0:13:25 | |
Armin Faber's plane | 0:13:25 | 0:13:26 | |
was repainted in RAF colours and tested to destruction. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:30 | |
As a result, future Marks of Spitfire were designed with modified wings | 0:13:30 | 0:13:35 | |
and bigger engines, to regain their edge in the skies. | 0:13:35 | 0:13:40 | |
Armin Faber became a prisoner and survived the war after landing here at Pembrey. | 0:13:42 | 0:13:48 | |
The events of that day in 1942 also meant countless | 0:13:48 | 0:13:52 | |
Allied pilots survived, thanks to their improved planes. | 0:13:52 | 0:13:57 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:13:57 | 0:13:59 | |
e-mail [email protected] | 0:13:59 | 0:14:02 |