The Great Escape

Extracted from: Kozak-Holland, M. (2007). Project Lessons from the Great Escape (Stalag Luft III). Oshawa, Ontario. Kozak-Holland, M. (2008). Project lessons from the Great Escape: Case study-Part 1, 2011, from http://www.maxwideman.com/guests/great_escape/intro.htm

Background
The Great Escape is an extraordinary event from the Second World War. During the Second World War, the Allied air crews suffered horrific losses, nearly 250,000 men failed to return from their missions. Those who were not killed, and lucky enough to have survived being shot out of the sky, faced an uncertain future in enemy hands as Prisoners of War (POW) captives. This is the story of how a project arose from within their captivity in an almost impossible situation. With everything "stacked" against it, the project should have never got passed the planning stage yet it was not only implemented but it met its objectives under the most adverse of circumstances.

Captivity
The ordeal of POWs started with a roller coaster ride of emotions into enemy captivity. From the sudden shock of having to bail out at 18,000 feet, only hours after being in the safety of their homes, to avoiding injury in a risky parachute jump in the dark. Things just got worse as the next step was to evade capture, not just from troops but a very unsympathetic and hostile population that saw them as terror fliers. Going into hiding and then contacting an escape line happened to just a lucky few. Most were inevitably captured and this is when the psychology of these airmen was pushed to the limits. This started with the demoralizing rounds of interrogation, all the time not knowing what had happened to their fellow aircrew, to being in a hopeless and dangerous situation.

Bleak Situation
Once in a POW camp POWs suffered from starvation rations, overcrowding, the extremes of a seasonal climate, and being incarcerated for an unknown length of time. Malnourished and under constant threat of diseases the airmen were dragged to the lowest of depths so their will to resist was completely broken. For the POWs, under these dire circumstances, the easiest response would have been to resign to the situation and drift aimlessly through the war in captivity.

Escape Proof
The authorities, through the hard lessons of running POW camps, had done everything possible to make the camp fully escape proof, to discourage escapers from even thinking about it. From the geographic location in the heart of the Third Reich, well distanced from neutral countries, to locating the camps on sandy soils so any signs of digging would be a dead giveaway. Every detail of the camp had been thought through from building the huts on stilts to the burying of microphones beneath the camps barbed-wire fences to pick up any underground noises.

History of Project Failures

The most notorious of the special prison camps for airmen was Stalag Luft III, the home of the most notorious escape artists in the Third Reich. But it was a history of failure at Stalag Luft III, the POWs had lost or abandoned at least fifty tunnels in a thirty-month time frame. Almost all tunnels were discovered much to the dismay of the POWs who had seen countless escape attempts fail. This was partly due to the lack of governance. Escape was a private enterprise and literally one tunnel could bump into another. But there was a positive. Through experience they had honed their skills. The arrival of Roger Bushell, arch escaper, codenamed Big X' changed all of this.

Squadron Leader Roger Bushell

The Plan
The starting point for the project was in March of 1943 with the move to a new camp, the North Compound, created to relieve some of the overcrowding. From the outset the move to and taking up of brand-new quarters would cause confusion and provide new opportunities, and all sorts of possibilities for escape. Bushell was very determined, ruthless, and believed that any escape had to be well organized. The relocation of POWs to the north compound would give them a fresh start and a new opportunity, an incentive to rethink strategy, and approach to escapes. He delivered the following impassioned speech to the escape committee, which had the seeds of a project charter: "In North Compound we are concentrating our efforts on completing and escaping through one master tunnel. No private-enterprise tunnels allowed. Three bloody deep, bloody long tunnels will be dug Tom, Dick, and Harry. One will succeed." Bushell laid out high demands for the project, describing the scope of a project on a scale that had not been tried before. He asked the escape committee for various project deliverables: 200 passes to be forged, 200 civilian suits, 200 compasses, and 1000 maps. In today's world project scope

management can be defined as the sum total of all the products and requirements, or features, the totality of the work needed to complete a project. As work started on the new compound the Senior British Officer approached the Kommandant and suggested that a few POW working parties help in the building of the new compound. The Kommandant, believing the offer was in the right spirit of cooperation and likely to raise morale, unknowingly introduced members of the escape committee into the compound. They paced and mapped the layout of the camp, calculated distances and angles, and surveyed the area outside of the wire. They began to put together all the details for the escape, such as where to dig the tunnels and how long they should be. One of the German surveyors handed over the plans for the compound, and the POWs stole them and carried them back to the camp to be studied. These diagrams revealed the underground sewage system and two tunnels leading out to nearby drainage areas although too narrow for escape purposes. The escape committee had to carefully consider the many elements that defined the scope of the escape project, for example: Number of tunnels dug, determined by the number of concrete foundations available (hut footings) and the risk of discovery. Depth and length of the tunnels, determined by the distance from the camp to the woods and available tunnel shoring materials. Scope of intelligence and security required, as at any time six guards were wandering around in the compound. Number of escapers that could get through a tunnel in a given night. Equipment required for completing the tunnel, and also for the escapers going through the tunnel.

The scope was also defined by the calendar and the seasons. For example, tunneling in the winter was a challenge as any sand dispersal onto the snow-covered ground was not possible. Also in the spring the thaw of heavy snow accumulation could have a significant impact on any tunnel, with the weight of the melt bearing down on it. Summer traditionally was escape season as any other time was not conducive to surviving in the open without shelter. So the scope of the project was driven by seasonal windows. Bushell introduced rigorous discipline and a governance framework where no one could escape without full authority. He set up the camps Escape Committee which was faced with the conundrum of determining the best possible approach to escape, and this varied depending on the available resources and the overall risks. By analyzing the resources and risks, they could determine the best Return on Investment (ROI). Bushell wanted to attempt something different were the investment was high but so was the payback. He set to work planning a mass escape on a scale never before attempted, freeing 200 prisoners in one go. He set up departments responsible for different aspects of escape, for example, Intelligence Gathering, Tunnel Engineering, Equipment and Tool Making, Document Production, Map Making, as shown in the figure below.

How did a Project Emerge

With very limited resources somehow the POWs in Stalag Luft III organized this project of staggering proportions. It is not a question of how did a project emerge but how could it emerge? The answer is complex. These were the hardened escapers, the finest from all camps, who had suffered years of

oppression which only increased their determination to reach an objective, literally one step at a time. At each step there was a hurdle, some of these seemingly insurmountable. Yet the POWs took on every problem and doggedly wrestled it till a solution was found.

Organization

Some Problems and Issues

Location
The first problem preventing escape was the location of Stalag Luft III and the unknown outside world beyond it. Sagan was 100 miles (160 kms) southeast of Berlin, about as far as possible from the neutral Sweden, Switzerland, and Spain, so any escape was going to require a lot of travel and involve many elements. In 1943, getting around the Third Reich was difficult because of the constant stop-checks and searches by the police, military, and Gestapo. No persons could travel without documents detailing who they were, where they were traveling, and why.

Prowling Guards
The second problem preventing escape was keeping the activities hidden from the prowling guards and ferrets. Their constant surveillance forced the prisoners to carefully conceal documents, equipment, clothing, and sand from the tunnels in various hiding places. Ferrets, German Army intelligence troops specialising in escape detection, could enter the compound at any time and wander in and out of huts. English-speaking ferrets lay under barracks listening to conversations. Often, even after detection tunnelling was allowed to continue without intervention until near completion, to keep the POWs busy and prevent them from working on other escape plans. Every second day after morning roll call or appell, about thirty ferrets and guards entered one block and threw everyone out. They then proceeded to search the hut from top to bottom for about three hours, leaving nothing unturned. They would search different huts each time and select them randomly. Sometimes they would take advantage of the empty block to hide in the ceiling whilst the POWs were outside on appell.

Physical Barriers
The third problem preventing escape was the number of physical barriers around the camp. Search towers with floodlights, double barbed-wire fences, trip wires, and shoot zones surrounded Luft III. With any surface escape, there was a very high risk of being spotted.

To prevent tunnel escapes, the huts were set up off the ground on stilts, the fence was well over 100 yards (90 meters) from the huts, and microphones monitored by the administrative compound were placed every 33 feet (10 meters) to detect digging. With any tunnel, there was a very high risk that the tunnel would collapse and sand would come pouring down with little warning. Ventilation was a problem, and a means of getting enough air into the tunnel had to be devised. Without proper ventilation, men would vomit after a few hours of digging because of the foul air.

Travelling Incognito
The fourth problem preventing escape was the need to travel incognito in the outside world. This included mastering a certain level in a language and culture that were foreign to most British and Canadians and going unnoticed by wearing disguises. The camp was hermetically sealed from surrounding communities, who were likely to be unfriendly to the POWs because they were airmen. The camp guards (who would recognise escaped prisoners) lived in the local towns and villages, so it was a problem just to get out unrecognised.

Ability to Survive
The fifth problem preventing escape was the issue of surviving in a harsh environment and climate. In the winter and spring, the night temperatures were well below freezing, and from December to April heavy snow lay on the ground, so the summer was escape season. The POWs would have very limited access to water and food and would have to carry most of these necessities on their persons.

Transportation
The sixth problem preventing escape was the access to transportation to get to a neutral country and safety. If the POWs could secure transport, they could get away from the camp and the search cordons. Methods of transport included trains (passenger and goods), bicycles, and boats/ships. One advantage that they had was the proximity of the local train station at Sagan, less than 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away.

Task
Overview: Within each tutorial team, please break into two groups: Allied POWs and Stalag Luft III management. In simple terms, the goal of the Allied POWs is to escape, and the objective of the Stalag Luft III is to prevent such escapes. Following the instructions below, the two teams are to independently step through the first three steps of the PMBoK scope management knowledge area: namely Collect Requirements, Define Scope and Create WBS. Because the case study cannot address every eventuality, you may have to make assumptions about some issues; but please document these assumptions. Collect the Requirements: o Read the case study carefully. o Identify the key stakeholders and document their specific requirements in an appropriate format. o Resolve any conflicts in stakeholder needs Define Scope: o Based upon your analysis of the requirements developed in the previous step, develop a scope statement which contains as a minimum: The Project Goals The Key Deliverables or Products Key Milestones Major Constraints Major Assumptions Exclusions

This is very similar in format to the example of a Scope Statement contained in the class presentation. Create the WBS: o Create a WBS with a minimum of two levels of hierarchy following the approaches (e.g. Top-Down or Bottom-Up) and guidelines (especially only nouns no verbs) given in the class presentation. You may use one or more of the following approaches: Top-Down, Bottom-Up, WBS Standards and WBS Templates; however, a quick web search will probably demonstrate that there are few WBS templates for this type of project. o Express the WBS in an appropriate format (e.g. graphic hierarchy, text hierarchy, mindmap etc) o Check the quality of the WBS using the quality criteria described in the class presentation. Stress-Test the WBS o Because POW escapes particularly on the scale envisaged in this case study are somewhat rare, you do not have much actual experience to draw from in validating the completeness of your WBS. As an alternative, you can test the WBS using a simple devils advocate methodology. o Once both teams Allied POWs and the Stalag Luft III teams have completed preliminary drafts of their respective Scope Statement and WBSs, each team will present their WBS to the other team. The team receiving the presentation will critique and try to find gaps in the WBS of the team presenting. For example, the Allied POWs team may present a WBS which doesnt contain an effective mechanism to dispose of soil removed from tunnels. The Stalag Luft III team might argue that without such a mechanism, its suspicions about tunnelling will be quickly aroused. The teams will then refine their WBSs for presentation. Please keep your results, as we may use this case study again in future classes/tutorials. o

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Extractedfromhttp://www.b24.net/pow/greatescape.htm