Customer Reviews

The Longest Tunnel: The True Story of World War II's Great Escape (Bluejacket Books)

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Burgess provides information that was unavailable to Paul Brickhill for his 1950 book on the Great Escape. Burgess provides fascinating photos from German sources, now also available online, of the goon towers of Stalag Luft III, Tom's trap, Harry from various angles, etc. Fascinating new details have also come to light. Consider, for instance, the depths of the tunnels. The POWs believed that placing the tunnels thirty feet down put them out of range of the microphone listening devices. It turns out that the devices still were able to pick up the sounds of the tunneling. The Germans thus knew that tunneling was going on, but were enraged at not being able to pinpoint the location of Tom for a long time and Harry up to the breakout of the 76. But the depth of the tunneling evidently made the signal diffuse enough to prevent the listeners from zeroing on the exact site of the tunnel.

Burgess describes the three Polish engineer-pilots who were responsible for the design of the traps for Tom, Dick, and Harry. Each trap had to be completely different from any other so that the Germans could not make a generalization for subsequent searches if they found one or two of them. The challenges were considerable. The initial trapmaking was a noisy operation, requiring cover noise to be made by other POWs. The trap had to be invisible to German eyes yet capable of being closed and sealed in a few tens of seconds. Harry's trap was actually the one underneath a stove. Tom's trap was found by the Germans apparently by accident. A goon reportedly dropped a pipe at or near the trap, causing the fast-drying concrete mask to chip and thus give away the trap. Burgess goes into quite a bit of detail about Dick's trap and its ingenious construction under a shower drain, and suggests that Dick's trap may yet be found by some archeologists. Years later, this is exactly what has happened. In this way, Burgess has been proved prophetic.

Burgess discusses in considerable detail the postwar search for the German criminals responsible for the murder of 50 of the 73 recaptured airmen. It is amazing how quickly suspected individuals informed on their colleagues once questioned. They kept justifying their action by referring to the Allied airmen as "terror-fliers". Burgess should have provided the proper context for this German propaganda. In fact, the very first "terror-fliers" were none other than the Germans themselves. Within hours of the beginning of World War II (the German-Soviet conquest of Poland in September-October 1939), German bombers were killing tens of thousands of Polish civilians (including those in marked hospitals) through indiscriminate bombing of unmistakable civilian targets!

The Longest Tunnel: The True Story Of World War II's Great Escape is an amazing historical chronicle of the true story behind the popular and classic World War II movie "The Great Escape", which is in turn based on the book "The Great Escape" by Paul Brickhill. Author Alan Burgess, a RAF flyer in WW II, draws upon sources that even Brickhill did not have access to, explaining how seventy-six allied POW's traveled through a 350-foot tunnel to make their mark on history. Exciting, highly readable, dramatic, and narrated in express detail.

Mr. Burgess takes us on another look at 'The Great Escape'.You may have seen the movie, you might have read PaulBrickhill's original work on the subject, but Mr. Burgess digs deep into the story for us readers. Mr. Brickhills original work suffered a bit in my opinion from the time it was publised (early 50's). People didn't want to know the full horror of the great escape. Mr. Burgess tracks down every detail to tell this story, and there is no softening of the impact nor is there any detail missing. An excellent work.

This book tells the fascinating story of a mass breakout from a WWII German POW camp (also told in the movie "The Great Escape".) However, the story is told more interestingly by someone who was there in "The Great Escape" by Paul Brickhill. I would recommend this one only if you're interested in really researching the subject.

What you get with this book is interviews with Great Escape survivors in the 1980s. Their recollections are then incorporated into the narrative as contemporaneous dialogues between prisoners in Stalag Luft 111. This gives a fictional air to events. Some of the words are those of executed escapees. In fact, their thoughts are even given as well. For instance, Roger Bushell's thoughts as he spoke to a prisoner meeting can be read about here. Bushell was executed in 1944.

Compared to Paul Brickhill's The Great Escape this book is short on details of the planning and development of the tunnels. Brickhill was part of the escape but didn't go on the night. His book was written shortly after the war and has lots of contemporary realism. By contrast, Burgess's book relies on memories forty years after the event. There is no sense of immediate danger. Burgess has plenty of information on the postwar search for the executioners, but Brickhill also covered this area.

If you read one book on the Great Escape choose Paul Brickhill's book. Give the Longest Tunnel a miss.

If you saw the movie "Great Escape" or read The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill and is looking for more information on the subject, this book is definitely a great choice.

It tells the story of the prisioners from Stalag Luft III without repeating what Mr Brickhill already wrote on his famous book. It has more details and stories that only came out only much after the end of the war. It describes courage of a few men and the horrors of imprisionement during war time, up to the moment the perpetrators were hunted down and brought to justice.

Definitely recommend.

What can I say, if you buy this, you've hit the motherlode!! Nazis, spies, defectors, tunnels, toffs on the run, French, Aussies, Poles, Brits and Jerries.

The real story of how and why Tom, Dick and Harry were constructed; who went through the tunnels and what ultimately happened to each of them.

Great book!