The mass escape of 76 Allied airmen from a Nazi POW camp in March 1944 remains one of history’s most famous prison breaks. Although the German Luftwaffe designed the Stalag Luft III camp to be escape-proof, the audacious, real-life prison break proved otherwise.
When the Nazis built the maximum-security camp 100 miles southeast of Berlin to house Allied aviators captured in World War II, they took elaborate measures to specifically prevent tunneling, such as raising prisoners’ huts off the ground and burying microphones nine feet underground along the camp’s perimeter fencing.
The Nazis, however, didn’t account for the daring and ingenuity of the Allied flyboys who toiled for nearly a year to escape to freedom. How did they do it?
During the height of Northern Ireland’s “Troubles” in the 1970s and ‘80s, the British government incarcerated hundreds of Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) paramilitaries inside the notorious Maze Prison.
Built on a former Royal Air Force Base 10 miles outside Northern Ireland’s capital of Belfast, the maximum-security prison featured eight jail blocks shaped like the capital letter H. Touted as Europe’s most secure penitentiary, the Maze was thought to be escape-proof—that is, until 38 IRA prisoners staged the biggest jailbreak in British history in September of 1983.
At another German POW camp, Colditz Castle, prisoners began working on a unique escape plan: the construction of a glider plane. The men intended to launch the glider from the castle roof, but before that happened, Colditz was liberated by the Allies in April 1945. Read more.
Brand-new to HISTORY Vault! From Alcatraz to Dannemora and Maze to Pittsburgh State Penitentiary, Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman explores audacious real-life prison breaks through history.
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