Luftwaffe evaders....

[phylo_roadking]

Were LW bomber crews and fighter pilots equiped with evasion aids the way MI9 equiped RAF flyers during the war? Maps in jacket linings and on silk scarves, compasses in buttons, flying boots that could be cut down to civilian footwear etc.?

I'm asking because of a "local interest" magazine programme aired on our local commercial television channel last night, Lesser-Spotted Ulster. The programme was centred last night on the village of Gilford, Co. Down....which during WWII was also the site of Elmfield POW Camp. It opened in january 1945 and was used to house Heer and LW personnel captured in France and the Low Countries.

Now, even in the few short months remaining of the war there were a number of escape attempts made, including two POWs who made it to within a few miles of the border, heading for Dublin...

...roll forward to a few years after the war, and the disused Nissen Huts were auctioned off to farmers. A local farmer bought one - Nissen Huts were once a feature of farms here in Northern Ireland because they were cheap to buy snd-hand LOL - and tucked away in the rafters of the one he bought he found an evader's map. BUt a very strange one - just an outline of the island of Ireland with the border markered....but no other towns EXCEPT DUBLIN, no roads, no railways - JUST waterways!

It wasn't clear from the programme if this was an "official" map, or whether it was handcrafted in the camp, but it started me wondering IF the LW issued "official" evasion maps at all to aircrew???