Franz von Werra

Franz Xaver Freiherr von Werra (13 July 1914 – 25 October 1941) was a German World War II fighter pilot and flying ace who was shot down over Britain and captured.

Franz Freiherr von Werra was born on 13 July 1914, to impoverished Swiss parents in Leuk, a town in the Swiss canton of Valais.

The title of Freiherr (equal to Baron) came from his biological father, Leo Freiherr von Werra, who after bankruptcy, faced deep economic hardship.

Because his relatives were legally obliged to look after the Baron's wife and six children, his cousin Rosalie von Werra persuaded her childless friend Louise Carl von Haber to permit the Baron's youngest, Franz and his sister, to enjoy the benefits of wealth and education.

The von Habers did not tell the children their true origin.

Werra joined the Luftwaffe in 1936 and was commissioned a Leutnant in 1938.

At the beginning of the Second World War he was serving with Jagdgeschwader 3 in the Battle of France.

He became adjutant of II Gruppe, JG 3 and was described as engaging in boisterous 'playboy' behavior.

He was once pictured in the press with his pet lion Simba, which he kept at the aerodrome as the unit mascot.

He was the only Axis prisoner of war to escape from Canadian custody and return to Germany apart from a U-boat seaman, Walter Kurt Reich, said to have jumped from a Polish troopship into the St. Lawrence River in July 1940.

Oberleutnant von Werra was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 14 December 1940.

His story was told in the book The One That Got Away by Kendall Burt and James Leasor, which was made into a film of the same name, starring Hardy Krüger.

Werra scored his first four victories in May 1940, during the Battle of France.

Downing a Hawker Hurricane on 20 May, two days later he claimed two Breguet 690 bombers and a Potez 630 near Cambrai.

In a sortie on 25 August during the Battle of Britain, he claimed a Spitfire west of Rochester, and three Hurricanes, as well as five destroyed on the ground for a total of nine RAF planes eliminated.

The details of the actions are unknown, as the incident has not been found in British records.

On 5 September 1940, Werra's Bf 109E-4 (W.Nr. 1480) was shot down over Winchet Hill, Kent.

It is unclear who was responsible for this victory, which was originally credited to Pilot Officer Gerald "Stapme" Stapleton of 603 Squadron.

The Australian ace Flight Lieutenant Paterson Hughes (234 Squadron) was posthumously given half of the credit, in The London Gazette 22 October 1940 citation awarding him a bar to his DFC.

Some sources suggest that P/O George Bennions of 41 Squadron may have damaged Werra's fighter before Hughes and Stapleton also scored hits on it.

Other sources suggest F/L John Terence Webster of 41 Squadron was the victor.

Werra crash-landed in a field on Loves Farm and was captured by the unarmed cook of a nearby army unit.

He was initially held in Maidstone barracks by the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment, from which he attempted his first escape.

He was digging with a pick axe while guarded by Military Police Private Denis Rickwood, who was armed only with a small truncheon.

There is no mention of this escape attempt in the book The One that Got Away. He was interrogated for 18 days at the London District Prisoner of War "cage" Trent Park, a country house in Hertfordshire which before the war had been the seat of Sir Philip Sassoon.

On 17 December 1940, after a month's digging, it was complete.

The camp had forgers who equipped the escape group with money and fake identity papers.

On 20 December, Werra and four others slipped out of the tunnel under the cover of anti-aircraft fire and the singing of the camp choir.

Werra managed to return to Germany via the US, Mexico, South America and Spain, finally reaching Germany on 18 April 1941.

Eventually, Werra was sent to POW Camp No. 1, at Grizedale Hall in the Furness Fells area of pre-1974 Lancashire, between Windermere and Coniston Water.

On 7 October he tried to escape for a second time, during a daytime walk outside the camp.

At a regular stop, while a fruit cart provided a lucky diversion and other German prisoners covered for him, Werra slipped over a dry-stone wall into a field.

The guards alerted the local farmers and the Home Guard.

On the evening of 10 October at around 11:00 p.m., two Home Guards found him sheltering from the rain in a hoggarth (a type of small stone hut used for storing sheep fodder that is common in the area).

On being removed from the hut he knocked the lamp to the ground, extinguishing the light, then he quickly escaped and disappeared into the night.

On 12 October, he was spotted climbing a fell.

The area was surrounded, and Werra was eventually found, almost immersed in a muddy depression in the ground.

He was sentenced to 21 days of solitary confinement and on 3 November was transferred to Camp No. 13 in Swanwick, Derbyshire, also known as the Hayes camp.

In Camp No. 13, Werra joined a group calling itself Swanwick Tiefbau A.G. (Swanwick Excavations, Ltd.), which was digging an escape tunnel.

The tunnel can still be seen at the Hayes Conference Centre.