Posted on 09/10/2007 8:44:36 AM PDT by 1066AD
The Great Escape tunnels greater than thought By Gary Cleland Last Updated: 1:54am BST 10/09/2007
The discovery of dozens of underground tunnels has uncovered the extraordinary risks that Allied prisoners took bidding for freedom from the Nazi prison camp that inspired The Great Escape.
Far from just the three tunnels - Tom, Dick and Harry - made famous in the classic film, archeologists at Stalag Luft III in Zagan, Poland, have found more than 100 attempted escape routes.
Tunnel plans - click to enlarge The discovery is powerful evidence that Allied prisoners, led on the big screen by Richard Attenborough and Steve McQueen, consistently refused to accept their incarceration.
Prisoners, the majority of whom were bright young air force officers aware of their importance to the Allied war effort, faced execution if they were caught trying to escape.
In March 1944, of the 76 Allies who did get out of the camp in the escape that inspired the film, only three made it to safety. The rest were recaptured and 50 were executed by the Gestapo.
Guards discovered two of the three tunnels, Tom and Harry, prompting the prisoners to concentrate their efforts on the third, which eventually came up just short of the forest that would provide vital cover.
Stalag Luft III in Poland was the Nazi prison camp the film The Great Escape was based upon But the full extent of how many underground escape routes were being created has remained undiscovered for 60 years until now, after archeologists from Keele University and University College London (UCL) used ground penetrating radar on the site.
The scientists are excavating the remains of Dick, after locating the entrance shaft to the famous tunnel.
Inside they found remnants of an escape kit featuring an attaché case containing a civilian coat, fragments of a German language book, buttons, thread, a toothbrush, a marble and a draughts piece.
Empty Red Cross milk cans had been used to construct a basic ventilation system in the shaft.
advertisementPeter Doyle, a consultant geologist and visiting professor at UCL, said the camp at any one time could have contained up to 10,000 men. Around one third of them would have been digging tunnels, and another third helping, he said.
"It was a huge operation. There are different types of tunnels. There are deep, extensive tunnels which are obviously aimed at getting out a large number of men.
"But there are also shorter, more opportunistic tunnels.
"It really was a hotbed of escape activity. It was a continuing battle against the Germans."
I thought the sandy soil was considered too unstable to safely do any more digging. Apparently not.
It may be a while before he answers me as he is probably at the Table Mountain Casino spending his taxpayer funded checks...
Pretty sure it was pre-OSHA.
Yes, that’s how I hear it in my head......
Darn that Colonel Klink.
Ping!
bttt
No one was ever cooler than Steve McQueen in the movie "The Great Escape".."You'll still here, right Commandant?"...
The scientists are excavating the remains of Dick, after locating the entrance shaft to the famous tunnel.
Sounds like a line out of a bad p0rn movie.
And at least one six-season TV series...
I had the opportunity to meet some of the veterans from Stalag Luft III in April. I was attending a Dead Sea Scrolls conference in Kansas City and they were having a reunion at the same place. I think it was around 80 vets there plus their families. Their health was frail and most had oxygen bottles in tow, but it was still an awesome experience to be in the presence of such heroes!
They couldn’t have done it without the gonkulator.
But don’t you know there was never a successful escape from Stalag 13?
"Vogel's pressure was tremendous. Every move Phipps made was watched and controlled by guards, working sometimes eighteen or twenty hours a day. There seemed no way out....when tragedy struck. The war was over."
The theme from The Great Escape is our ring tone. We love it!
For the 50!
Best of luck to your brother at the casino. That’s another one my wife hasn’t ran off to on a bus to play
Bingo. ;-)
Our family was lucky, they all were ground pounders in the Army in WW2,, lots less chance of getting taken POW, altho it could and did happen.. almost all of them have gone to the final muster in the hereafter.. Give your brother a big hug from all of us next time ya see him.
“I know nosh-INK, NOSH-INK...”
“VAT...ish dish man DOINK HERE?”
Wow! Wow! (cough, cough, cough) wow.
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