It was the clarity of the northern shoreline of the Brest Peninsula last week that made me think of Adrian Warburton. I was travelling on AC 877 en route from Frankfurt to Toronto. We were at 34000 ft. according to the screen at my seat and the view was crystal clear; a photoreconnaissance pilot's delight when over the target. I was malingering on the flight attendant's request to lower the window shade at least until we had only ocean below. Commercial air travel these days is for moles and movie addicts.

Wing Commander Adrian 'Warby' Warburton, DSO and Bar, DFC and two Bars and recipient of the American Distinguished Flying Cross, was an RAF pilot. Born in Middleborough, England, he showed little flair for flying during training and admitted having “two left feet†when controlling an aircraft on the ground, but in the air it was another matter. In 1939 he started as a probationary pilot; by 1944 he had flown nearly 400 missions and had been promoted to Wing Commander.

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P-38 over Schweinfurt, Germany

His service as a photoreconnaissance pilot in the Mediterranean conflict is legendary. One of his more famous missions was the pre-raid reconnaissance of Taranto harbour which led to the sinking of half of Italy's capital ships in a single night. He made three passes over the harbour and returned trailing a wire from one the ships in the flotilla; he had flown in so low.

His last flight was on 12 April 1944 while seconded to the USAAF 7th Reconnaissance Group stationed at RAF Mount Farm in Oxfordshire, supposedly in a ground liaison role after recovering from injuries in a jeep accident. In a USAAF P-38 ‘Lightning’ he set off to photograph Schweinfurt in Germany, a crucial manufacturing location for the German war effort that was heavily defended. Another P-38 flown by the USAAF mission commander Carl Chapman was to photograph Regensburg and, according to the ww2awards web site, the pilots were then to rendezvous and fly on to a base in Sardinia. Warburton never showed up.

In 2002 his aircraft was discovered buried in a field south-west of Munich, near a village. He was finally buried with military honors on 14 May 2003 nearby at the Durnbach Commonwealth War Cemetery. Details can be found in the History Channel documentary “Mystery of the Missing Aceâ€, parts of which can be seen on YouTube.

Here is the route I used in FSX to fly Warby’s Lightning and ‘what should have happened’ that day if he had not been shot down.

Route: EGLJ AFI SCF LQ PIN LIEO

I used the update of David C. Copley’s P-38 package (fsx_p-38_39th_fs.zip) from the Flightsim library for this flight. There are a variety of freeware and payware P-38’s you can use. The departure airfield is RAF Chalgrove, only a couple of miles from the RAF Mount Farm site. After Schweinfurt I chose a route over the Alps and Lake Garda. I don't know the location of the destination airfield so chose Olbia Airport (LIEO) in Costa Smeralda on the northern tip of Sardinia.

At least in flight simulation no-one told me to close the window shade as I looked at the ground below.

Allan Jones

allanj12@gmail.com

http://moonscourse.blogspot.ca

Allan Jones is the author of In a Moon’s Course, an ebook of 28 World War II flight stories/plans of the Air Transport Auxiliary, available at Amazon, Kobo, W.H. Smith and other ebook online suppliers.