Qualla: Pembrey Sands Air Weapons Range

Pembrey Sands Air Weapons Range: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 23 June 1942, Oberleutnant Armin Faber was flying a Focke-Wulf Fw 190A-3 - the latest German fighter, faster and better-armed than the Spitfires the RAF had been losing to it for six months - when Czech-manned RAF squadrons engaged him over south Devon. Pushed north past Exeter, low on fuel, disoriented, Faber crossed what he believed was the English Channel and put his aircraft down at the nearest friendly airfield in occupied France. The airfield was RAF Pembrey on the Carmarthenshire coast. The duty pilot grabbed a Very pistol, ran from the control tower, jumped onto the wing of the taxiing Fw 190 and arrested the pilot of Hitler's newest fighter. The RAF finally had an intact 190 to take apart. Faber later attempted suicide.

Pembrey Sands Air Weapons Range: Marsh, Sand and Spitfire

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The site at Towyn Burrows was acquired in 1937 and was barely higher than the high tide. To the seaward side lay Cefn Sidan, the eight-mile pale-gold beach that has wrecked ships for centuries and now serves the Ministry of Defence as one of its most-used aerial gunnery ranges. T...

Pembrey Sands Air Weapons Range: The Polish Squadron

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In early 1941 No. 316 Polish Fighter Squadron was formed at Pembrey, flying Hawker Hurricanes. The Polish pilots who reached Britain in 1940 - many of them escaped from German and Soviet occupation, some on foot across half of Europe - had a fierce reputation for skill and grim p...

Pembrey Sands Air Weapons Range: The Faber Mistake

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Faber's landing is the kind of incident that begins as comedy and ends as intelligence coup. He believed he was in the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy. He was in Carmarthenshire. The Bristol Channel had fooled him for the English Channel; the green coast at Pembrey for a Luftwaffe...

Pembrey Sands Air Weapons Range: The Vampire and the Hunter

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After the war RAF Pembrey became No. 233 Operational Conversion Unit, training pilots on the new jet aircraft - de Havilland Vampires from 1952, later Hawker Hunters. The OCU's badge featured a wildcat's head; its Welsh motto was Ymlaen, forward. The Vampires displayed the badge ...

Pembrey Sands Air Weapons Range: Range, Racetrack and Airfield

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The active gunnery range survived. Pembrey Sands Air Weapons Range, run by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, still operates four targets along the beach: three for bombing - both low-level and dive - and one strafe target with three panels for cannon practice. Forward Air ...