His luck sounds like mine. "An RAF pilot who mistook greenhouses for the White Cliffs of Dover parachuted into Nazi-occupied territory and four years of the Second World War as a prisoner. Sergeant Robert Stirling was part of the Royal Air Force's 87 Squadron and lost his bearings while chasing a German bomber towards France in April 1941. The young pilot, then 23, realised he was dangerously low on fuel and attempted to return to Exeter, Devon, where he was stationed. But his compass was broken and during his attempt to navigate back to base he believed the reflection of the thousands of greenhouses was the famous chalk cliffs on the Kent coastline. Believing he was on 'safe ground,' he bailed from his Hawker Hurricane aircraft. Instead he found himself on the uninhabited Lihou Island, close to Guernsey in the Channel Islands, which at the time was under Nazi rule. He spent a night with a family on Guernsey before giving himself up to Nazi authorities, who sent him to the Stalag-B prisoner-of-war camp, near the town of Bad Orb in Hesse, southern Germany. Guernsey was covered in greenhouses due to its extensive horticultural industry. Sergeant Stirling then miraculously made it uninjured from Lihou to Guernsey across a causeway and minefield before spending the night inside the home of a local family. At the end of curfew the following morning, he gave himself up to police and the Nazis and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp in Germany. Little is known about his time at the Stalag IX camp, apart the fact that he tried to escape three times, including once on a bicycle, but was always caught. His remarkable story has now been pieced together by a guide from Guernsey who was told about it by a member of the family that shielded him while on one of his tours." www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9326347/WW2-Hurricane-airman-mistook-glare-Channel-Island-greenhouses-Dover-Cliffs.html
It sounds funny, but in those pre-SatNav days it was easy to become disoriented. Perhaps the most (in)famous was poor old Armin Faber, who presented the RAF with a perfect Fw190 ( the first to fall into Allied hands ). He mistook the Bristol Channel for the English Channel and landed at Pembrey in South Wales...... Armin Faber Whoops !
