The Great Escape Documentary - Secret Underground Tunnel - National TV

• Report rights infringement
• published: 25 Aug 2015
• views: 38219

The Great Escape Documentary - Secret Underground Tunnel - National TV Stalag Luft III (German: Stammlager Luft, or primary camp for aircrew) was a Luftwaffe-run prisoner-of-war camp during World War II that housed caught air force servicemen. It remained in the German district of Lower Silesia near the town of Sagan (now Żagań in Poland), 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Berlin. The website was chosen since it would be challenging to run away by tunneling. The camp is most ideal understood for two famous prisoner escapes that took location there by tunneling, which were depicted in the films The Fantastic Escape (1963) and The Wooden Horse (1950), and guides by former prisoners Paul Brickhill and Eric Williams from which these movies were adjusted. The camp was extremely safe. Despite being an officers-only camp, it was referred to as a Stalag camp rather than Oflag (Offizier Lager) as the Luftwaffe had their own nomenclature. Later camp expansions added compounds for non-commissioned officers. Captured Fleet Air Arm (Royal Navy) crew were considered to be Air Pressure by the Luftwaffe and also no differentiation was made. At times non-airmen were interned. The first compound (East Compound) of the camp was completed and opened on 21 March 1942. The first prisoners, or kriegies, as they called themselves (from Kriegsgefangene), to be housed at Stalag Luft III were British and Commonwealth airmen along with Fleet Air Arm officers, arriving in April 1942. The Centre compound was opened on 11 April 1942, initially for British sergeants but by the end of 1942 replaced by Americans. The North Compound for British airmen, where the Great Escape occurred, opened on 29 March 1943. A South Compound for Americans was opened in September 1943 and USAAF prisoners began coming to the camp in significant numbers the following month and the West Compound was opened in July 1944 for UNITED STATE officers. Each compound included fifteen solitary story huts. Each 10-by-12-foot (3.0 m × 3.7 m) bunkroom slept fifteen men in 5 three-way deck bunks. Ultimately the camp grew to approximately 60 acres (24 ha) in size and housed about 2,500 Royal Air Force officers, about 7,500 U.S. Army Air Forces, and about 900 officers from other Allied air forces, for a total of 10,949 inmates, including some support officers. The prison camp had a variety of design features that made escape extremely difficult. The digging of escape tunnels, in particular, was discouraged by several factors, the barracks housing the prisoners were raised approximately 60 centimetres (24 in). off the ground to make it much easier for guards to identify tunneling, the camp had actually been created on land that had a very sandy subsoil. The sand was bright yellow, so it can effortlessly be detected if anyone dumped it on the surface (which consisted of grey dust) or even just had a few of it on their garments. The loosened, retractable sand indicated the architectural integrity of any kind of tunnel would certainly be quite bad. A 3rd defence against tunneling was the positioning of seismograph microphones around the boundary of the camp, which were expected to sense any kind of audios of excavating. More Documentary Films: http://thetrendstoday.com Be The First To Watch Our Newly Uploaded Films Just By Subscribing To Our Channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UChMjlytMi_zXY-RFlUzfBZQ?sub_confirmation=1