I'm sure I've seen this before? "The story of the greatest escape of World War II has been told for the first time. The audacious breakout saw dozens of Allied prisoners of war scale the wire at a camp deep in Nazi Germany using four huge ladders they had made and disguised as bookshelves. During the breakout 32 prisoners got out and legendary pilot Douglas Bader, who was a prisoner in Oflag VI-B camp near Warburg, described it as the most daring escape of the war. It was overshadowed by the famous tunnel Great Escape which was immortalised in a Hollywood film starring Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough. But a new book describes the incredible breakout two years earlier and pays tribute to the unsung heroes behind it. They were led by Major Tom Stallard, a charismatic 37-year-old from Bath, Somerset, who was one of the most determined escape artists in captivity. After repeated failures with tunnels - which camp guards kept finding - he decided to go over the wire. He initially planned to get 250 men out but in the end had to settle on 40. A young Scottish lieutenant, Jock Hamilton-Baillie, 23, then came up with the idea of making the folding ladders to scale the twin 12-foot high perimeter fences, which stood six feet apart. Major Stallard launched Operation Olympian, so-called because it was an international effort involving men from all over the Commonwealth, which took five months to plan. The ladders were made of two 11ft long sections, each with seven rungs which would open and form a right-angled bridge up and across the fence. The wood was plundered from a hut the vengeful camp guards had wrecked after finding yet another attempted escape tunnel. The first ladder was made in the camp's music room where the prisoners had relatively free rein and the sawing and hammering could be hidden by the sounds of instruments. The two sections were stood against the wall and disguised as new shelving units and filled with sheet music and other literature. They even fooled the despised camp's chief security officer, Hauptmann Rademacher, who inspected them and praised them for being well made. In the meantime the prisoners had discovered how to short the perimeter floodlights thanks to an electrical fault deliberately left by forced labourers who built the camp. As the ladders were built, a forging department dubbed 'Thomas Cook' produced the documents the escapees would need. They were led by RAF Flt Lt Gilbert 'Tim' Walenn, an ace forger who was the basis for Donald Pleasance's character in The Great Escape film. Walenn took part in the real Great Escape from Stalag Luft III in 1944 and was among the 50 executed in cold blood on Hitler's orders. Zero Hour for the escape was set for 9.30pm on August 30 1942 and 40 Allied prisoners gathered in two huts near the perimeter. Each man carried 12lbs of food to last him between 18-21 days, plus washing kit, tinned cigarettes, basic medical kit, spare socks and underwear. Maps were made on very fine tissue paper and compasses were smuggled into the camp in Red Cross parcels by MI9, the specialist 'escape' arm of military intelligence in London. The lights were knocked out and a short distance away two homemade grappling hooks left hidden by the wire were pulled by unseen hands to distract the nearest sentry, who was standing 50 yards away. Two white painted ladders had been left leaning against the fence, adding to the bluff and a stream of fake orders were shouted in the air by two German-speaking British officers. At the same time, in the music room other prisoners were gleefully playing instruments as loudly as possible to add to the general confusion. The diversions worked perfectly as the four 10-man teams darted from the huts carrying their ladders ‘like firemen’, and hit the fence. Four men quickly erected the ladders and locked the 'bridge' section in place and the teams poured over the wire. Unluckily, ladder number four collapsed after just two men had managed to climb over, but the other three ladders worked like clockwork and in just 40 seconds a total of 32 men were free. Belatedly, the guards realised what was happening and began shooting into the dark with their rifles and machine guns. Incredibly, just one Allied prisoner was hit by the hail of bullets, when one ricocheted into his heel - but it failed to stop him. Six of the escapees were quickly recaptured, but by dawn 26 PoWs were free. Back in the camp, in cheeky reference to the Allies' narrow escape from Dunkirk a year earlier, a sign had appeared against the ladders: 'Another British evacuation.' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2817692/Allied-PoWs-escaped-Nazi-camp-using-ladders-disguised-shelves.html#ixzz3HvfU7hth
Never heard of this escape before. What happened to the 26 that successfully escaped? Did they make it home or not? Hopefully so.
According to this, only three actually made it home- http://powvets.com/2011/11/mass-escapes-from-german-pow-camps/
"in the meantime the prisoners had discovered how to short the perimeter floodlights thanks to an electrical fault deliberately left by forced labourers who built the camp." Can you elaborate on this ? What was it ? and how is this fault to be so well hidden by the forced labourers not to be discovered by the germans, yet weeks later when the first POW arrive, be simply discovered -without the original labourers there to tell or hint them ?
