He wore a cravat instead of a regulation tie, no rank insignia, and often a borrowed uniform. He nearly washed out of flight training. And yet Adrian "Warby" Warburton became the most decorated photo-reconnaissance pilot in the Royal Air Force — the man commanders called the most important pilot they had.

He flew unarmed aircraft, alone, low over enemy fleets and airfields, camera whirring while the flak came up to meet him. Then, one day in 1944, he took off and simply never came back. His fate would stay a mystery for fifty-eight years.

The maverick of Malta

Warburton found himself on the tiny, besieged island of Malta — and Malta made him. From its cratered airfields he flew reconnaissance sorties that kept the Allies' eyes open across the Mediterranean, photographing Italian harbours and convoys that fed the war in North Africa. His pictures of the fleet at Taranto in November 1940 helped make possible the Fleet Air Arm's devastating carrier strike there.

He was, by every account, gloriously unconventional: scruffy, insubordinate, brave to the point of recklessness. He flew so low over enemy ships to get his photographs that he sometimes came home with wireless aerials and debris caught in his aircraft. On an island fighting for its life, he became a legend — and found love, with the cabaret singer turned RAF plotter Christina Ratcliffe, who would wait for him for the rest of her life.

The flight that never arrived

By 1944 Warburton was a liaison officer with the American reconnaissance squadrons, and had befriended Elliott Roosevelt, the president's son. On 12 April 1944, though no longer required to fly operationally, he borrowed an American Lockheed F-5 — a camera-carrying version of the P-38 Lightning — to photograph targets in Germany. He became separated from his escort and vanished. No wreck, no body, no answer.

Fifty-eight years later

For decades Warburton was simply "missing." Then, in 2002, an aircraft historian tracing crash sites led investigators to a field near Egling an der Paar, in Bavaria. Buried there were the remains of an F-5 — and of its pilot. A propeller pockmarked with bullet holes told the story of a fighter or flak hit. The remains were identified as Warburton. In 2003 he was finally buried with full military honours at the Dürnbach War Cemetery, his long flight home complete at last.

The king of photographic reconnaissance, the pearl of the Mediterranean, had been found.

Sources: Wikipedia; Malta Aviation Museum (Frederick Galea); Imperial War Museum.