Mass Escape Bid Foiled At Dartmoor

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29910, 25 August 1962, Page 11

Mass Escape Bid Foiled At Dartmoor

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright)

LONDON, August 23. One hundred dangerous men planned to break out of Dartmoor by tunnel, the “Daily Express" reported. But warders found the tunnel by smashing a whole network of plots In the prison on the bleak Devon moors. The newspaper said more than 100 men, many of them gun-fighting thugs, dug the tunnel in the mailbag shop under the very feet of their guards. Prisoners had crowded around a loose slab of concrete to screen men working in short shifts on the shaft. The drill was strictly according to the textbooks on prisoner - of - war escapes.

Princess

Loose soil was carried out in trouser pockets and dribbled away in the exercise yard. After clearing the mailbag shop foundations the tunnel moved out 12ft and then hit the gaol’s main security wall. This was too massive to negotiate, so a neat exit was made in the shadow of the wall.

The big break then involved scaling the wall in day-time and for that fog was needed, the newspaper said. But day after day the weather was not bad enough.

And all the time the. informers were at work. In one sudden move the authorities stripped the prison bare, uncovering a mass of escape equipment and home-made weapons. Then a warder noticed muddy footprints round thtf loose stone in the mailbail shop, and Dartmoor’s biggest plot since the war was ended. The “Daily Express” said warders had raided every cell and prevented a mass break, by finding “barrow loads” of weapons. The newspaper said informers had long been whispering that a big break was planned. claiming explosives had been smuggled from the prison quarry. Reports of the tunnel being found at Dartmoor Prison were denied by the Home Office, according to the "Daily Telegraph.” The Home Office also said reports of explosives being found were untrue.

Engagements For

(N.Z.P.A..Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, August 22. Clarence House, the Queen Mother’s home, today announced two engagements for Princes# Margaret in October. One is a London ball which she will attend with Lord Snowdon, and the other a visit to an old age home. The announcement comes after London newspaper speculation yesterday that Princess Margaret was expecting her second baby.

Film of (osmonaata.—A full-length colour film, "Stellar Brothers,” showing in detail how Major Andrian Nikolayev and LieutenantColonel Pavel Popovich were trained for their recent space flight, would be released next month, Tass reported Mpscow, August 24.