The ten most daring great escapes in history
Video report by ITV News Correspondent Paul Davies
New research has revealed how prisoners of war escaped from Colditz prison in southern Germany during the Second World War.
ITV News looks at the top ten most daring great escapes in history:
1. Alcaltraz
It was supposed to be America's only escape-proof prison before three men vanished from inside its walls on 11 June, 1962.
The island in San Francisco Bay, called The Rock, was used to hold the worst criminals, including John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris who were all serving life.
Allegedly the men dug through the concrete walls using a spoon and an improvised drill made from a vacuum cleaner they had stolen.
The prison later claimed the men drowned at sea, though their remains were never found.
2. The Great Escape
The Great Escape was an attempt by Allied prisoners of war to escape a Nazi maximum-security work camp Stalag Luft III, in the Second World War.
Three tunnels were dug 30 feet underground so they would not be spotted by the guards,
In the plan, calculated by British officer Roger Bushell, provisions were made for forged papers for 200 escapees.
But of 200 who tried to escape on 24 March, 1944, only 76 made it out of the tunnel because it exited too close to a guard tower.
There was also an air raid, meaning of the 76, just three escaped, and 50 were shot by the Gestapo.
3. Midnight Express
Billy Hayes was a 23-year-old US student who was caught attempting to smuggle hashish out of Turkey in 1970.
He was jailed for four years and was transferred to Imrali Island in the Bosphorus Strait - but he was handed an extended 30 year sentence weeks before his release.
Hayes was given a job on the docks, but he escaped in a rowboat in 1975.
He eventually arrived in Istanbul, dyed his hair and travelled to Greece, where he was deported home to America.
In 1977, Hayes wrote the book Midnight Express about his escape which was later made into a film.
4. The Maze breakout
Some 38 IRA prisoners broke out of the most escape-proof maximum security prison in Europe in 1983.
Using guns smuggled into the prison, Bobby Storey and Gerry Kelly the escapes The Maze, located about 10 miles (16 km) west of Belfast
They took over H-Block 7, killing one guard and wounding several others.
They escaped in a van that was delivering food, but 19 prisoners including Storey were caught.
The other 19 went to safe houses, and some were sent to America and other countries.
5. Notorius gangster John Dillinger
In 1934 notorious US gangster John Dillinger was taken to the US state of Indiana where he was wanted for killing a policeman.
But just months earlier he broke out of a jail in Ohio where he had been sentenced for a bank robbery.
Until then the authorities had claimed the prison was as escape-proof as the Titanic was unsinkable.
The FBI said that in the break out, Dillinger used "what he claimed later was a wooden gun he had whittled".
He held up the guards before driving away in a sheriff's car.
Dillinger finally met his end when he was shot dead later that year outside the Biograph theatre in Chicago.
6. Triple chopper
Pascal Payet used helicopters to escape from French prison on multiple occasions.
The convicted killer broke out in 2001 using a chopper and repeated the feat in 2003, he helped friends escape at the same time.
Although he became one of France's most closely watched prisoners, he still managed a third helicopter escape in 2007.
7. Sheets tied together
In 1983 Jeffrey McCoy scaled down a rope made of sheets tied together
He managed to escape from Manhattan Correctional Centre in New York and lived quietly in New York for years before he was caught.
8. Tin opener
Convict Ralph Phillips used a tin opener up to cut open a ceiling of the Erie County Correctional Facility in New York in 2006.
He fled the building but was captured five months later.
9. Tower of London
Jesuit priest John Gerard broke out of the Tower of London in an escape involving invisible ink, string, rope, a boat, and orange-juice
He has been imprisoned and tortured under Queen Elizabeth I's Protestant reign.
10. Final note
Otis Blunt and Jose Espinosa managed to break through a cement wall of New Jersey's Union County Jail before Christmas in December 2007.
They left a note mocking the guards which read: "Happy Holidays".