The Airmen's Stories - Sgt. P T Wareing

Philip Wareing, who has died aged 71, was a Battle of Britain fighter pilot who made one of the most remarkable escapes from a German Prisoner of War camp in Poland during the 1939-45 War. In the late afternoon of December 16, 1942, Sgt Wareing was detailed with other inmates at Schubin camp, a converted girls' school 150 miles west of Warsaw, to collect bread from a railway siding. When one of the working party dropped a loaf on the line, Wareing, on the pretext of picking it up, made his getaway in the gathering darkness. Well prepared, he had food, maps, a compass and was wearing grubby army trousers, a cloth cap and a RAF tunic which he had altered to pass as a civilian jacket. Reaching Bromberg, some 20 miles north of Schubin, he found a rickety bicycle which he pedalled and walked to Gradenz. At the railway station there, he swapped this bicycle for a new one which a German had just left propped against a wall and set out for Danzig. There was a heart-stopping moment as he crossed a heavily-guarded bridge over the Vistula. While guards were questioning two Germans in uniform, Wareing cycled past them. Arriving in Danzig, he was dismayed to find he had forgotten to bring the money he had ready for an escape. However it was not long before he saw some Swedish ships whose Blue Peter pennants indicated imminent departure. After hiding among timber piles, he walked up the gangway of one of the ships which was loading coal. Later that day he was spotted by a party of Russians working in the coal hole but after saying quietly "Angliski pilot" the Russians left him alone. Late that night when they had gone, he concealed himself amid the coal.
The ship sailed the next morning. Two days later a member of the crew saw him but the ship was close to Halmstad where the Swedish police collected him. Shortly afterwards the British Legation in Stockholm arranged his repatriation.

Sgt. Wareing had ended up in Schubin after baling out of his flaming Spitfire over Calais on August 25, 1940. As a member of No. 616 (South Yorkshire) Squadron which was stationed at Kenley - a smoking ruin at the time where pilots sometimes slept under the wings of their Spitfires – Wareing found himself one of seven Spitfires engaging 30 Me109’s. He shot down at least one enemy fighter but soon, as he described it, "my lovely Spitfire was riddled like a sieve, on fire and the propeller was not turning." Despite the radiator being hit and enemy bullets rattling on the armour plate protecting his back, Wareing continued to fire at four 109’s in line ahead. Then, as another enemy fighter poured fire into his Spitfire, the petrol tank above his legs went up and the blast helped him escape from the cockpit. Fearing that he might be shot at as he descended, Wareing delayed opening his parachute until enemy aircraft had moved away, and landed in a ploughed field. Before an enemy motor-cyclist with sidecar arrived to take him prisoner, he remembered to wipe the recognition signal letters of the day from one of his hands, using his blood. At a nearby Luftwaffe base he was treated as a comrade, the German pilots apologising that all the captured NAAFI Scotch and beer was finished and they could offer only cognac. His membership of the German Alpine Club before the war added to the camaraderie, and he was presented with cigarettes and chocolate. Before leaving the enemy base, Wareing gave his name and address to a Luftwaffe pilot who was shot down over south-east England shortly afterwards. Finding Wareing's name in the pilot's pocket, an intelligence officer was able to tell his mother that her son was alive. At that stage all she knew was that he was missing though his Squadron's commanding officer had written to her "We all hope that he will turn up yet".

Philip Thomas Wareing was born in 1915 and educated at Bishops Vesey's Grammar School, Sutton Coldfield. He joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in 1939. By the end of the war, Wareing had been promoted to Flight Lieutenant and served in Australia. He worked in Air Traffic Control for a while after leaving the RAF and was also involved in delivering cars.

A half-brother of EB Wareing, the Daily Telegraph foreign correspondent, Philip Wareing was married twice and widowed twice. He is survived by a daughter in Australia.

With acknowledgments to the Daily Telegraph