Home / The Old Fox: Great Escapes
Watch on YouTube
Premieres 21 October 2026 at 6:55pm UK time
The Old Fox: Great Escapes · Episode 1
The Real Great Escape: 76 Out, 3 Home
In March 1944, Allied airmen crawled out of Stalag Luft III through a tunnel called Harry. The Old Fox tells how it was dug, why it came up short of the trees, and what happened to the 76 men who got out.
Watch on YouTube Follow on TikTok
Share this story
What the fox said
Three tunnels under a prison camp. They called them Tom, Dick and Harry. Let's see who got out.
Stalag Luft III. A camp for captured Allied airmen, in what is now Poland. Spring, 1943.
The huts stand off the ground. The soil is bright yellow sand. And buried microphones listen for digging.
Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, Big X, plans three tunnels at once, and 200 men out.
30 feet down. Bed boards shore up the walls. A home-made bellows pumps air through old milk tins.
The sand goes out in bags hidden in trousers, shaken out across the compound. These men are called penguins.
Tom is found by the guards. Dick's exit is lost when the camp grows. That leaves Harry.
Harry runs over 300 feet, with a little railway, and trolleys pulled by rope.
The night of the 24th of March, 1944. But Harry comes up short of the trees, in view of a guard tower.
An air raid cuts the lights. 76 men get out, before the 77th is spotted in the snow.
73 are caught. And on Hitler's orders, 50 of them are shot.
After the war, RAF investigators hunt the men responsible. Trials follow.
Only 3 make it home. Two Norwegians reach Sweden. A Dutchman reaches Spain.
76 got out. 3 got home. 50 never came back. Remember the 50. Escape closed. Keep your nose to the wind.
Sources
- Stalag Luft III was a German camp for captured Allied airmen near Sagan, now Żagań in Poland. Planning for a mass escape began in April 1943, led by Squadron Leader Roger Bushell (Imperial War Museums; Wikipedia, 'Stalag Luft III').
- The prisoners dug three tunnels, Tom, Dick and Harry, about 30 feet down, shored up with bed boards, with a hand-made air pump and a small rope-hauled railway (PBS NOVA, 'Tunnel Harry'; Wikipedia).
- Tom was discovered and Dick was abandoned; Harry, about 102 metres long, was used on the night of 24–25 March 1944 (Imperial War Museums; Wikipedia).
- Harry's exit came up short of the trees. Seventy-six men got out before the 77th was spotted (Wikipedia; PBS NOVA).
- Seventy-three were recaptured and fifty were executed on Hitler's orders. Only three, two Norwegians and a Dutchman, reached safety, in Sweden and Spain (Imperial War Museums; Wikipedia, 'Stalag Luft III murders').
- After the war, the RAF investigated the killings and those responsible were put on trial from 1947 (Wikipedia, 'Stalag Luft III murders').
Spotted a mistake? Tell us in the YouTube comments and we'll correct it.