Amazing prison escapes

5.Escape From Alcatraz

In its 29 years of operation, there were 14 attempts to escape from Alcatraz prison involving 34 inmates. Officially, every escape attempt failed, and most participants were either killed or quickly re-captured. However, the participants in the 1937 and 1962 attempts, though presumed dead, disappeared without a trace, giving rise to popular theories that they were successful. The most famous and intricate attempt to escape from Alcatraz (June 11, 1962) saw Frank Morris, and the Anglin brothers burrow out of their cells, climb to the top of the cell block, cut through bars to make it to the roof via an air vent. From there they climbed down a drain pipe, over a chain link fence and then to the shore where they assembled a pontoon-type raft and then vanished.

The trio are believed to have drowned in the San Francisco Bay and are officially listed as missing and presumed drowned. However, they may have made it and gone to a place where people did not know them. 

4.Libby Prison Escape

The Libby Prison Escape was one of the most famous (and successful) prison breaks during the American Civil War. Overnight between February 9 and 10, 1864, more than 100 imprisoned Union soldiers broke out of their prisoner of war building at Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia. Of the 109 escapees, 59 succeeded in reaching Union lines, 48 were recaptured, and 2 drowned in the nearby James River. Libby Prison encompassed an entire city block in Richmond. To the north lay Carey Street, connecting the prison area to the rest of the city. On the south side ran the James River.

The prison itself stood three stories above ground with a basement exposed on the river side. Living conditions were extremely bad; the food, sometimes lacking altogether, was poor and sanitation practically nonexistent. Thousands died there. The prisoners managed to break in to the basement area known as “rat hell” which was no longer used due to rat infestations, and dig a tunnel. After 17 days of digging, they succeeded in breaking through to a 50-foot vacant lot on the eastern side of the prison, resurfacing beneath a tobacco shed inside the grounds of the nearby Kerr’s Warehouse. When Col. Rose finally broke through to the other side, he told his men that the “Underground Railroad to God’s Country was open!”

The officers escaped the prison in groups of two and three on the night of February 9, 1864. Once within the tobacco shed, the men collected inside the walled warehouse yard and simply strolled out the front gate. The tunnel provided enough distance from the prison to stealthily subvert those jurisdictional lines and allow prisoners to slip into the dark streets unchallenged.

3.Pascal Payet

There can be no doubt that this man deserves a place on this list – he has escaped not once, but twice from high security prisons in France – each time via hijacked helicopter! He also helped organize the escape of three other prisoners – again with a helicopter.

Payet was initially sentenced to a 30 year jail term for a murder committed during the robbery of a security van. After his first escape (in 2001) he was captured and given seven more years for his role in the 2003 escape. He then escaped from Grasse prison using a helicopter that was hijacked by four masked men from Cannes-Mandelieu airport. The helicopter landed some time later at Brignoles, 38 kilometres north-east of Toulon, France on the Mediterranean coast. Payet and his accomplices then fled the scene and the pilot was released unharmed. Payet was re-captured on September 21, 2007, in Mataró, Spain, about 18 miles northeast of Barcelona. He had undergone cosmetic surgery, but was still identified by Spanish police. 

2.The Great Escape

Stalag Luft III was a German Air Force prisoner-of-war camp during World War II that housed captured air force personnel. In January 1943, Roger Bushell led a plot for a major escape from the camp. The plan was to dig three deep tunnels, codenamed “Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry.” Each of the tunnel entrances was carefully selected to ensure they were undetectable by the camp guards. In order to keep the tunnels from being detected by the perimeter microphones, they were very deep — about 9 metres (30 ft) below the surface. The tunnels were very small, only two feet square (about 0.37 m²), though larger chambers were dug to house the air pump, a workshop, and staging posts along each tunnel. The sandy walls of the tunnels were shored up with pieces of wood scavenged from all over the camp.

As the tunnels grew longer, a number of technical innovations made the job easier and safer. One important issue was ensuring that the person digging had enough oxygen to breathe and keep his lamps lit. A pump was built to push fresh air along the ducting into the tunnels. Later, electric lighting was installed and hooked into the camp’s electrical grid. The tunnellers also installed small rail car systems for moving sand more quickly, much like the systems used in old mining operations. The rails were key to moving 130 tons of material in a five-month period; they also reduced the time taken for tunnellers to reach the digging faces.

“Harry” was finally ready in March 1944, but by that time the American prisoners, some of whom had worked extremely hard in all the effort to dig the tunnels, were moved to another compound. The prisoners had to wait about a week for a moonless night so that they could leave under the cover of complete darkness. Finally, on Friday, March 24, the escape attempt began. Unfortunately for the prisoners, the tunnel had come up short. It had been planned that the tunnel would reach into a nearby forest, but the first man out emerged just short of the tree line. Despite this, 76 men crawled through the tunnel to initial freedom, even through an air raid during which the camp’s (and the tunnel’s) electric lights were shut off. Finally, at 5 AM on March 25, the 77th man was seen emerging from the tunnel by one of the guards. Out of the 76 men only 3 evaded capture. Fifty men were killed and the rest were captured and sent back. 

1.Colditz Escape

Colditz was one of the most famous German Army prisoner-of-war camps for officers in World War II. The camp was located in Colditz Castle, situated on a cliff overlooking the town of Colditz in Saxony. There were numerous successful attempts at escaping Colditz, but one in particular is the most interesting. In one of the most ambitious escape attempts from Colditz, the idea of building a glider was dreamt up by two British pilots, Jack Best and Bill Goldfinch, who had been sent to Colditz after escaping from another POW camp. The plan was to construct a two-man glider part by part.

The glider was assembled by Bill Goldfinch and Jack Best in the lower attic above the chapel, and was to be launched from the roof in order to fly across the river Mulde, which was about 200 feet (60 m) below. The officers who took part in the project built a false wall, to hide the secret space in the attic where they slowly built the glider out of stolen pieces of wood. Since the Germans were accustomed to looking down for tunnels, not up for secret workshops, they felt rather safe from detection. Hundreds of ribs had to be constructed, predominantly formed from bed slats, but also from every other piece of wood the POW’s could surreptitiously obtain. The wing spars were constructed from floor boards. Control wires were made from electrical wiring in unused portions of the castle.

A glider expert, Lorne Welch, was asked to review the stress diagrams and calculations made by Goldfinch. Although the Colditz Cock never flew in real life, a replica of the Colditz glider was built for the 2000 Channel 4 “Escape from Colditz” documentary, and was flown successfully by John Lee on its first attempt at RAF Odiham with Best and Goldfinch in tearful attendance. While Best and Goldfinch did not escape Colditz (the camp was relieved by the allies just as the glider was nearing completion), they certainly had the most interesting and innovative method for executing it.
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