Great Escape
- Grade Level: Junior High (7-9)-Adult
- Subjects: History
- Produced By: WGBH
- Year: 2004
- Country: United States
- Language: English
- Running Time: 60m
- Captions:
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The movie "The Great Escape," starring Steve McQueen, was based on fact - on the most daring and technically ingenious prison escape of World War II. The location was a remote, high-security internment camp for Allied airmen. Known as Stalag Luft III, the camp was at Sagan in present-day Poland. The escape emerged from a stunningly ambitious plan: Allied POWs set out to dig three tunnels more than three hundred feet long and thirty feet below ground, which they nicknamed 'Tom,' 'Dick,' and 'Harry,' so that if the Germans discovered one tunnel there would still be a fallback. NOVA follows a team of archaeologists on a hunt for the single surviving tunnel, 'Dick,' that the Germans never found. Accompanying the team was a group of three of the original escapers, who returned to the scene of their daring escapade for the first time in sixty years. The film shows the ingenious methods and devices improvised by the prisoners: how they surveyed the tunnels, disguised the entrance traps, and engineered an amazing air pump and railway system, all from materials scavenged from the camp. But when the time for the breakout came, the thrill of the escape would take an unexpected and tragic turn.