Honoured at last, the Scots hero of Stalag Luft III
HE was the heroic Scot murdered by the Nazis for taking part in the Second World War’s most famous prisoner-of-war breakout, immortalised in the film The Great Escape.
Now, the bravery of Alastair ‘Sandy’ Gunn from Auchterarder, Perthshire, and his RAF crewmates, will be remembered by a monument set to be built in St James’s Park, in London.
Flt Lt Gunn was one of hundreds of men who flew specially modified, ultra-lightweight, long-range Spitfires – stripped bare of heavy weapons and armour plating to
‘Time brave men of the PRU were remembered’
accommodate extra fuel tanks – for the RAF’s Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (PRU).
In March 1942, his mission to photograph the German navy’s feared Tirpitz warship, sheltering in a Norwegian fjord, was dramatically cut short when he was shot down by enemy fighter planes. The 22-year-old suffered burns before baling out and being captured as a prisoner of war (POW) by the Nazis.
Flt Lt Gunn was one of 76 men who, at the Luftwaffe-run Stalag Luft 3 camp in Poland, staged a breakout – which was later made into the 1963 movie starring Steve McQueen.
Along with other POWs, he dug a tunnel to safety and, on the night of March 25, 1944, was the 68th man to leave the camp. The escaped men headed to Sweden, riding underneath freight trains through the night, but were discovered 15 miles from their intended destination on Germany’s Baltic coast on March 26.
Flt Lt Gunn was executed by the Gestapo, aged just 24. Now, a monument is to be built in the Royal park in honour of the men, and Flt Lt Gunn’s Spitfire, recovered from a Norwegian mountain range in 2018, is to be restored to fly again.
In addition, a ‘heritage flight’ will serve as a ‘living memorial’ to the men, and the Sandy Gunn Aerospace Careers Programme will teach schoolchildren about the history of the aerospace industry and its forefathers.
Scottish Tory MP Andrew Bowie, who is on the advisory board for the memorial project, said: ‘It is high time the brave men of the PRU were remembered and their actions – actions that hastened the end of the war and brought about the defeat of Nazism in Europe – marked.’