Experimental Aircraft, warbirds of America. Been members of those over a decade. This recent reminder from the Warbirds reminds me of one of the best Movies ever —commemorating one of the bravest escape attempts ever - during WW2.
I wonder how many high school kids today have been taught about WWII? Much less seen this movie.
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I hope this link stimulates some of you to teach your kids.
The Great Escape - a great movie!!!
Bobf
Begin forwarded message:
From: Warbirds of America <Warbirds@eaa.org> Date: July 7, 2022 at 10:01:32 CDT To: Robert Feldtman <bobf@feldtman.com> Subject:THE GREAT ESCAPE Reply-To: Warbirds of America <Warbirds@eaa.org>
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 immortalized in the 1963 movie The Great Escape proved otherwise.
When the Nazis built the maximum-security camp 100 miles southeast of Berlin to house Allied aviators captured in World War II—many of whom had made previous escapes—they took elaborate measures to prevent tunneling, such as raising prisoners’ huts off the ground and burying microphones nine feet underground along the camp’s perimeter fencing. In addition, the camp was built atop yellow sand that would be tough to tunnel through and difficult to conceal by anyone who tried.
The Nazis, however, didn’t account for the daring and ingenuity of the British, American Canadian and other Allied flyboys who toiled for nearly a year to construct a tunnel that would allow them to flee from captivity. For the aviators, the penalty for being caught trying to escape—generally 10 days in solitary confinement under the rules of the Geneva Convention—was worth the risk.
The secret operation was led and organized by Roger Bushell, a Royal Air Force pilot who had been shot down over France while assisting with the evacuation of Dunkirk. In the spring of 1943, Bushell and over 600 prisoners of war began building three tunnels with the code names of Tom, Dick and Harry. The plan called for each tunnel to stretch for more than 300 feet to the protective cover of the forest outside the camp’s perimeter fence.
To prevent the Nazis from learning of the operation, the airmen employed an elaborate lookout system and used subtle signs such as turning the page of a book or fiddling with a shoelace to raise notice of an approaching guard. By bribing guards with Red Cross goods unavailable in Germany—such as chocolate, coffee, soap and sugar—prisoners obtained cameras and travel documents that a team of artists used to forge identity cards, passports and travel passes. They replicated travel stamps by carving patterns in boot heels and using shoe polish as ink. The plan was to break out some 200 POWs, chosen by who had the best language and escape skills to succeed, who worked most in the preparation and, then, by lottery.
Only 76 of the planned 200 prisoners escaped. The Nazis eventually discovered the tunnel Tom and summoned photographers to chronicle their find before its demolition. While the Nazis celebrated their discovery, however, they were unaware that work on the two other underground passages continued. The prisoners eventually turned Dick into a storage space and focused all construction on Harry, which was completed at the end of winter in 1944.
The audacity and resourcefulness demonstrated by the Allied pilots was the stuff movies are made of, and the breakout was immortalized in the 1963 blockbuster The Great Escape, which starred Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson and James Coburn. There was no Hollywood ending, however, for most of the 76 men who broke out of Stalag Luft III.
The Nazis mobilized a massive manhunt. They erected roadblocks, increased border patrols and searched hotels and farms. Within two weeks, the Germans had recaptured 73 of the escapees. Only three men successfully fled to safety—two Norwegians who stowed away on a freighter to Sweden and a Dutchman who made it to Gibraltar by rail and foot.
A furious Adolf Hitler personally ordered the execution of 50 of the escapees as a warning to other prisoners. In violation of the Geneva Convention, Gestapo agents drove the airmen to remote locations and murdered them. Following the war, British investigators brought the Gestapo killers to justice. In 1947, a military tribunal found 18 Nazis guilty of war crimes for shooting the recaptured prisoners of war, and 13 of them were executed.
Donald E. Casey (1923-2020) was born on November 6, 1924 and grew up in the Chicago suburb of River Forest. In 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps Aviation Cadet Program. Don was called to service in February of 1943, choosing to enter navigation school to avoid the length and high failure rate of the pilot program. In October 1943, he received his silver wings and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant. Shortly afterward, he and his fellow airmen flew their brand new B-17 Flying Fortress bombers across the Atlantic Ocean to begin taking part in bombing raids over Germany and France in 1944.
In June of 1944, on his 28th combat mission and with only two more to go before he could be sent back stateside, 2nd Lieutenant Casey’s B-17 was struck by anti-aircraft fire, forcing him and his crewmates to bail out over Hamburg, Germany. The survivors of the parachute jump from 23,000 feet were quickly captured by German forces. Casey and four others were sent to the prison camp Stalag Luft III, where earlier in March the “Great Escape” had occurred. As the war neared an end, Casey and thousands of other POWs were moved to a camp in Bavaria, where they were liberated by Patton’s 3rd Army in April 1945.
After the war, Don attended Dartmouth College, receiving a degree in Economics in 1948. He worked in investment banking in New York and Denver before returning to Chicago and working for an insurance company. While working in insurance, he attended the Loyola University School of Law, earning a law degree in 1957. Don worked as a lawyer for the next 54 years, eventually becoming a partner at Springer, Casey & Dienstag before retiring in 2011.
In 1994, Don began writing what would become his memoir. Drawing from his own memories, wartime letters and other research, the book describes his wartime experiences as a bomber navigator and POW. Describing the origin of his memoir’s title To Fight for My Country, Sir!
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