Tom was dug next to a stove chimney in hut 123 but it was discovered by the guards before completion and was subsequently dynamited. Given the sheer numerical scale of involvement in the plan, the importance of secrecy was imperative, with Bushell threatening to court-martial anyone who uttered the word ‘tunnel’. airmen did act as lookouts, they were all transferred to another camp months before the escape actually took place.
#Great escape movie
Whilst the movie makes out that it was a small group of mainly American airmen who were part of the breakout, in fact over 600 prisoners were involved in the construction of the tunnels and whilst U.S. In his own words, ‘Three bloody deep, bloody long tunnels will be dug – Tom, Dick and Harry. His next attempt, however, would be his most ambitious yet.Ĭodenamed Big X, Bushell headed up an Escape Committee and planned to get an unprecedented number of over 200 men out from the camp in one attempt. One will succeed!'īushell had been shot down during the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940 and by the time he was transferred to Stalag Luft III in October 1942 he’d already made two escape attempts from previous camps. 'Three bloody deep, bloody long tunnels will be dug – Tom, Dick and Harry. None of that was to deter RAF Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, who conceived the plan for the mass escape in the spring of 1943. Three design features made tunnelling almost impossible – the loose collapsible sandy soil upon which the camp was built, elevated prisoner housing to expose tunnels and the placement of seismograph microphones around the perimeter of the camp.
The camp held thousands of captured Allied airmen during WW2 and was considered one of the hardest to escape from. Stalag Luft III was a German POW camp situated deep within Nazi-occupied Poland, some 100 miles southeast of Berlin. Read more about: WW2 The German Great Escape of Camp 198Īlthough the mass escape, which was the largest attempted during WW2, had nothing to do with daring motorcycle jumps over barbed wire fences, the true story is just as dramatic, as hundreds of men put their lives on the line to not only enjoy the taste of freedom once again but to also demonstrate their will to resist Hitler’s tyranny.
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