Gunther Plüschow, Aviator of Tsingtau

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunther_Pl%C3%BCschow

http://earlyaviators.com/epluscho.htm

It was an escape from a PoW camp as daring and fraught with danger as any immortalised by Hollywood.

Yet the story is less familiar than most – as it concerns the only German prisoner of war to escape from captivity in mainland Britain and make it home during either World War. Oberleutnant Gunther Pluschow enjoyed amazing good fortune as he made it out of a PoW camp in Donington Hall, Derbyshire, in 1915.

http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/pluschow.htm

When the First World War began in August 1914, Lieutenant Plüschow was assigned to the East Asian Naval Station at Tsingtau, a German colony in China. Two Taube airplanes had been shipped in crates from Imperial Germany. After supervising the assembly of the planes, Plüschow began serving as pilot and aerial observer. The second plane, flown by Lt. Friedrich Müllerskowski, soon crashed, leaving Plüschow to fly alone. A Japanese ultimatum on August 15 demanding the German evacuation of Kiautschou Bay was understandably ignored, and eight days later Japan declared war against Germany. Japanese and British forces then jointly besieged the German colony. By November 1914, the military situation at Kiautschou Bay had become untenable, and on November 6 Plüschow (who had flown reconnaissance and had downed a Japanese aircraft with his pistol) was ordered to fly out in his Taube, carrying the last dispatches and documents from the governor. After flying about 250 kilometres (160 mi) in his much-repaired airplane, Plüschow crashed into a rice paddy. He set fire to the Taube, then started for Germany on foot.

On November 27, 1927, Plüschow took the wooden two-masted cutter Feuerland to Punta Arenas, Chile. His engineer, Ernst Dreblow, brought his seaplane, a Heinkel HD 24 D-1313, aboard a steamer. By December 1928, the airplane had been fully assembled and the inaugural flight brought the first air mail from Puntas Arenas to Ushuaia, Argentina. In the months following, Plüschow and Dreblow were the first to explore by air the Cordillera Darwin, Cape Horn, the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, and the Torres del Paine of Patagonia. In 1929, Plüschow had to sell the Feuerland to obtain funds to return to Germany. There he published his explorations and photographs in a book, Silberkondor über Feuerland ("Silver Condor over Tierra del Fuego"), and a documentary film of the same name.

The following year, he returned to Patagonia to explore the Perito Moreno Glacier. There, both he and Dreblow were killed in fatal crash near the Brazo Rico,[3] part of Lake Argentino, on January 28, 1931.