Tens of thousands of Axis prisoners spent the Second World War behind Allied wire. Exactly one of them broke out, crossed an ocean, and made it all the way back to his own side to fly again. His name was Franz von Werra, and the film they made about him was called, simply, The One That Got Away.

Getting there took a downed fighter, a fake Dutch identity, a nearly-stolen Hurricane, a leap from a moving train, and a freezing river crossing into a neutral country.

The man who would not stay caught

Von Werra was flying a Messerschmitt Bf 109 when he was brought down over England in September 1940 and taken prisoner. Captivity did not agree with him. He escaped a work party in the Lake District and spent days loose on the fells before being recaptured.

His next attempt was pure theatre. In December 1940 he tunnelled out of a camp at Swanwick with several others, the diggers covered by the camp choir singing at full volume. Alone after the others were caught, von Werra pulled on a flying suit and became “Captain van Lott,” a downed Dutch pilot desperate to get back to his squadron.

The bluff nearly worked spectacularly. He talked a railway driver into helping him, reached the RAF airfield at Hucknall, and had a mechanic showing him the controls of a Hurricane fighter — until an officer pressed a loaded revolver into his ribs. Back to prison he went, this time shipped across the Atlantic to Canada.

Off the train and over the ice

He never reached the Canadian camp. On 21 January 1941, as the prison train rattled through Ontario, von Werra shoved open a window and threw himself out into a snowbank. He walked some thirty miles through the winter to the St. Lawrence River, found a boat, and hauled it across the ice and freezing water to the far bank — and into New York State.

The United States was still neutral. He was charged only with illegal entry, and the German consul quickly paid his bail. While Washington and Ottawa argued about extradition, von Werra slipped over the border into Mexico and worked his way home — Brazil, Spain, Italy, and finally Germany by April 1941.

A short-lived triumph

He came home a celebrity, debriefed at the highest levels on how the British interrogated prisoners — information that changed how the Luftwaffe prepared its aircrew. He was, by every account, the only German POW held in Canada to escape and make it all the way back.

His luck did not hold. In October 1941, only months after his return, von Werra’s Bf 109 went down over the North Sea, apparently from engine failure. His body was never found — the one who got away, gone for good.

Sources: Kendal Burt & James Leasor, “The One That Got Away”; War History Online; Valour Canada; Pegasus Archive; Wikipedia.