The Faustball Tunnel: German POWs in America and Their Great Escape (Bluejacket Books) [Paperback]

John Hammond Moore (Author)

Book Description

Series: Bluejacket Books | Publication Date: March 2006

On December 23, 1944, twenty-five German prisoners of war broke out of an Arizona prison camp not far from the Mexican border by crawling along a 178-foot tunnel. By Christmas day, they were looking for ways to reach Mexico and Axis sympathizers who would help them. Drawing on extensive interviews with the escapees and formerly classified documents, John Hammond Moore tells their incredible story - one of the few untold dramas of the war. Many of the men imprisoned at the Papago Park camp were among the Nazis' toughest and smartest U-boat commanders and their crews. Expecting trouble, their American guards marveled at how well the men adjusted to camp life. Spirits were high and the compound neatly raked several times each day. But the guards failed to realize the men were digging a tunnel right under their eyes. They hid their activity by building a volleyball (faustball) field. Twenty-five escapees used makeshift tools and coal shovels issued them by the camp to hack through the rocky soil. Once free, they disguised themselves as merchant seamen, consular officials, and workers armed with false identification papers. The men lasted six weeks on the outside before being recaptured. Their breakout, told here is breathtaking detail, remains the most sensational mass escape ever to take place from a POW camp on American soil. (This book was first published in hardcover in 1978.)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Hammond Moore is the author of numerous books, including Albemarle: Jefferson's County, an area where a POW camp was located, which piqued his curiosity in the subject of Germans held in America during World War II.

Product Details

• Paperback: 270 pages
• Publisher: US Naval Institute Press; 1st Bluejacket Books Ed edition (March 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591145260
• ISBN-13: 978-1591145264
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,232,806 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars German Great Escape, November 2, 2006

By 

John P. Rooney "John" (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Faustball Tunnel: German POWs in America and Their Great Escape (Bluejacket Books) (Paperback)

"The Faustball Tunnel". By John Hammond Moore. Subtitled: "German POWs In America And Their Great Escape". Random House, New York, 1978.

When I pulled this book from the library shelf, my rudimentary German told me that the title was "The Fistball Tunnel". When I looked in my German/English dictionary, I found that "Faustball" was a form of volleyball, and this, naturally, was explained in the beginning text of the book. I should have started to read the book in the library.

It seems that German Prisoners of War (POWs) had the same ideas as their British counterparts on the other side of the world. The German POWs were mainly maritime individuals: either Kriegsmarine or German Merchant Marine. In their prison in Arizona, these German sailors hit upon the idea of building a volleyball court so as to hide the dirt that was coming up from the tunnel they were building. "Hide in plain sight". This was quite similar to what some British were doing in their prison camp in Germany (see "The Great Escape" by Paul Brickhill). However, the German escape into the Arizona desert was NOT made into a major motion picture.

In the Arizona camp, the American Army guards were lackadaisical, to say the least. Some Germans escaped. The German escapees were surprised by the distances involved, and Arizona is not as big as Texas! Further, they were surprised to find people who did not speak English, but spoke Spanish. In this regard, I wonder why the Germans wanted to escape to Mexico, a country that was also at war with Nazi Germany; the German POWs were at greater risk inside Mexico than they were in the U.S. Interestingly, after their recapture, the German sailors learnt that the buzzing noise in the desert was the sound of rattlesnakes shaking their warning tails and that rattlesnakes are dangerous. All in all, the German escapees were as deficient in their knowledge of North America as the contemporary American/British escapees were about Europe.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It was a pretty good escape, maybe . . ., January 17, 2010

By 

Stuart Thiel (Chicago) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Faustball Tunnel: German POWs in America and Their Great Escape (Bluejacket Books) (Paperback)

Interesting, although the "great escape" of the title was a fizzle. If it ever hits you that German POWs must have been kept somewhere and you're casually wondering where and how, this is a good place to start reading -- it's the story of one camp and some of the men (on both sides) who served there, not an academic-style "history" full of facts and figures and analysis.