A Soldier's Daring Escape From A WWII Prison Camp | Daring Capers S1 EP6 | Wonder

[Music] World War 2 England a German pilot defies all odds concocting a bold and risky plan for escape before he could fly he has to crawl [Music] [Applause] [Music] on October 12th 1940 the normally serene hillsides of England's Lake District resounded with the barking of dogs and the tramping boots of the local police and the British Army they were looking for a German an escaped prisoner of war the Battle of Britain had raged throughout the summer and into the fall as Hitler's Luftwaffe tried desperately to wrest control of the skies from the RAF the Battle of Britain was just in the simplest terms a matter of air superiority for the Germans to stage the invasion of Britain they needed air superiority over the beaches and until they could establish that there was no way that they could proceed [Music] however the British were proving much tougher than Hitler's High Command had anticipated [Music] before the battle was over the Germans would lose more than 1700 aircraft nearly twice as many as the British and while RAF Emin bailed out of her friendly sword thousands of Luftwaffe crewmen were captured interrogated and imprisoned the prisoners fell into two distinctive camps one group were fairly happy to accept imprisonment and wait for their release others the men of action if you like to call them that were about wanting to get out and cause problems one of these troublemakers was first lieutenant franz von vera a 27 year old fighter pilot he had been captured September 5th 1940 after being shot down during a bombing raid von Vera was a notorious show-off who's charismatic charm made him a darling of the German media he kept a lion cub as his unit's mascot and claimed to be a disenfranchised bear wearing a large signet ring which bore his family's coat of arms and this this picture of course got to British intelligence so as soon as he was picked up it was pretty clear who he was right right from the word go Oh von vera had escaped from the Grizedale Hall POWs camp and had been on the run for five days but now his pursuers had him surrounded with nowhere left to run he had tried to hide in the underbrush Franz von Villa was finally recaptured after serving 19 days in solitary confinement von Vera was transferred to officers trends at camp number 13 near the village of Swanwick north of London [Music] right he found many former comrades-in-arms among the prisoners including Oryx tiny Albert a fellow fighter pilot whom he knew from flight training school von vera immediately asked him if there was a way to escape we didn't even have time enough to talk to each other about how either shut down I said don't you know England is an island you can let's get home from here he said I will try I have tried once our little key born black out is it ten to up still stood in his way the first was getting out of Swanwick the second was getting out of England still he was determined to succeed gentlemen especial mail this morning Red Cross packages you can pick him up in the corporal's office his confidence and conviction inspired his fellow officers and even those of higher rank deferred to his leadership rate rasca here he quickly assembled a crew yep the first was lieutenant Walter manhart yeah followed by Lieutenant Ahn's vilhelm yep and doc partner yeah the fifth man was major Heinz Cramer we were walking around the bar before I owned didn't find that there was any opportunity he couldn't imagine anything else so we just turned to the classic way to build to someone here oh yeah roll call was taken at breakfast and twice in the evening but not at lunch yeah all right then so by skipping the midday meal the men were able to work uninterrupted from roughly 10:00 until 4:00 Vaughn Vera jokingly named their group the Swanwick construction company [Music] although only five men would be asketh guard the entire camp was involved in the effort an elaborate network of lookouts was set up so that warning signals could be passed quickly to the men doing the digging [Music] an unused room in the north wing was the starting point from there it was less than 15 yards to the barbed wire the excavation would pass mere feet from the base of the guard tower but it was a risk they would have to take a carefully cut sectional floor disguised the entrance [Music] their tools were provided by the British scoops and fire buckets meant for disposing of incendiary bombs made short work of the dirt beneath the barracks with a jam jar and bits of wire they rigged a makeshift workaround it often gave them nasty shocks two men took turns digging while the others concealed the evidence by dumping the dirt in a cistern on the barracks lawn passing so close to the guard tower any heavy labour in the tunnel could potentially be heard above ground [Music] so the lamp also served as a warning [Music] [Music] the network of men stationed in the hallways could pass the alarm quickly enough [Music] although the entrance could be hidden in seconds some telltale signs of digging couldn't if the British had come to investigate they would have found the prisoners covered in fresh dirt it was so close to the ground level that it was dangerous that the Goths inside or outside might even see at least hear it so it was always decided to make noise [Music] [Music] from that point on whenever the men were digging diversion crews went into action [Music] arguing signal and playing the gramophone while the team spent their days tunneling at night they discussed their plans to get out of England vogner and Ville Hammond decided to head for Liverpool where they would attempt to stow away on a neutral ship grammar and man hard would try for Glasgow where they also hope to stow away but Vaughn Vera had something much more audacious in mind he planned to find the nearest airfield bluff his way onto the base and steal a plane his idea was to make contact with the RAF directly or through the police and to maintain that he was a dutch pilot captain fan lot who'd been flying a Wellington bomber with an experimental bomb site and that had to put the the aircraft down but he needed to get back to his base in Scotland very quickly to report and it was all top secret we knew that Dutch pilots had escaped to England he knew that that pilots were flying for their RF he was suspicious that his German would come through but touch is quite similar to German so he decided language wise Dutch would fit to equip himself for this charade von vera borrowed articles from other prisoners a flight suit from one boots from another a pair of flying clubs from a third he would also need some kind of ID on the pretext of settling a bet he tricked a British corporal into showing him his identity tag while the men joked about the bet they examined the disc noting the look and feel one of the fortunes took an imprint of its exact size by pressing the disk against the palm of his hand now I just needed to find some way to copy it in the meantime a promise was developing with the dig they were running out of air going up to the face and back was like swimming the length of a pool underwater work had slowed to a near standstill and they were only halfway to the barbed wire then fate dealt them another blow they they're digging the tunnel close to the fence they they are meeting with a sewage pipe a large sewage pipe trying to go underneath it was impossible because water collect sits below the pipe so they had to go over it going over the pipe would bring the tunnel dangerously close to ground level dramatically increasing the risk of detection or even worse collapse but it was their only option they retreated a few precious yards and started sloping the tunnel carefully upward toward the surface there was so little oxygen a man could only stay at the far end of the tunnel for a minute or two wolterman it was working the face when the unthinkable happened there was a table but still the prisoners escaped Thompson had collapsed and it seemed lieutenant Walter Manor had been buried alive although shakin Manhart was uninjured by the kv when franz von vera returned to assess the damage he found the lamp was still working and the disaster was a blessing in disguise the british had buried rolls of barbed wire along the perimeter of the camp to keep prisoners from digging under the fence at ground level but they never imagined someone might come up on it from underneath the varied wire supported the ground above it allowing much needed air to filter down to the tongue the swamp construction company was back in business working now progressed at a rapid rate on December 17th while the others watched manhunt tested the exit point by poking a stick up through the last few inches of dirt it appeared outside the barbed wire the tunnel had taken an entire month but they were through they decided to make their break the following Friday [Music] as fate would have it a bombing raid was launched that night the sound of the Luftwaffe balls was music to the Germans ears it was a perfect diversion and the forced blanket would give them better cover [Music] it was time for Vaughn Vera to become captain Vaughn light his only props were some British cigarettes and the camp come the times with little more than charm and bravado to bolster historic be prepared to leave the safety of the camp in search of an enemy everything when you change from the Tull life of POWs to try to escape you are changing your life completely because now you are back at war because now you are going to be shortened [Music] and their rear air is a barbed wire behind us the five of us cleaning from the reddish dust and we promised each other Christmas Italian [Music] the five men were out but there was no time for celebration the tunnel exit was camouflaged so that if undiscovered others could use it at a later date their escape from camp was a success but now they face the real challenge avoiding capture and getting out of England crumber and Menard went north towards Scotland and vodka and Ville held northwest toward liver while franz von vera headed right into the arms of the enemy he had convinced a railroad worker that he was captain von light a downed dutch pilot and persuaded the man to call an airfield he was a very outward going person a very able actor and probably able to read the way people's thoughts were going in to guide them in his own way he was picked up from the railway station by an RAF driver in a vehicle and because he approached the the air force base in the vehicle he would have automatically been allowed in the duty officer at the air base had sent a car to pick up captain von light the Dutch pilot but he found one thing strange there was no rank of captain in the RAF the duty officer wanted to get a look at captain van lot in person Varvara repeated his story for the duty officer he said he was part of the mixed special bomber squadron based at Aberdeen there was no such squadron but von vera hoped it would sound critical to be believed the officer placed a call to Aberdeen to verify the story commands for a birdie von Vera knew it was Now or Never he casually excused himself to go to the washroom where he quickly scrambled out a window and hurried across the tarmac he spotted a mechanic working on a hurricane fighter he presented himself as Captain Von Locke and said that he had been sent to make a practice flight with pilots of many nationalities were serving with the RAF and the mechanic didn't find this request unusual I told Vaughn Vera that he needed to complete some paperwork before he could take the plane Vaughn Vera signed the log book as Vaughn lot but when he listed his nationality he nearly gave himself away by making a telltale german-style stroke over the UI in Dutch but no one in the office noticed and they signed over a brand new British plane to a German pilot [Applause] now that he was finally sitting in the cockpit Vaughn Vera's impatience to be airborne was almost uncontrollable surely the duty officer had discovered these words the mechanic gave him a quick briefing on the controls then climbed out to hook up the battery every passing second was agony he tried to calm himself by making sense of the English indicator panel miles per hour would have to be converted to kilometers feet to meters but just as he was about to start the engine his luck ran out the duty officer had tracked him down had he been only a minute or two later Vaughn Derek could have been airborne instead he surrendered and claimed the protection of the Geneva Convention all five escapees were recaptured shortly thereafter most of the prisoners at Swan Lake including Vaughn Vera were transferred to a POWs camp in Canada but Vaughn Vera never reached it he escaped again this time to freedom On January 24th 1941 eleven months before Pearl Harbor he crossed the Canadian border into the then neutral United States while the diplomats were trying to decide his fate the German Embassy smuggled him out of the country through South America and back to Germany where he rejoined his unit on October 25th 1941 he was leading a patrol of three fighters of the coast of home when his engine apparently failed he was in radio contact at the time his last words rare friends I think I have to take a bath I would appreciate you to look after me this was the end of his life he had kept his special style to the end no trace of Franz von Verna or his aircraft was ever found [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Wonder

Views: 161,724

Keywords: Soldier escape, Wonder, World War II, bravery tales, captivating history, daring adventures, daring criminals, daring rescues, great escapes, gripping narratives, historical accounts, incredible journeys, inspiring documentaries, inspiring stories, ploys, reality documentaries, remarkable individuals, thrilling journeys, true events, war prisoners, wartime stories

Id: tTS3fqTv9mc

Length: 25min 35sec (1535 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2020