Wally Floody was a Mining Tunnel Engineer in Ontario, Canada before
joining the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940. Wally flew Spitfires in
401 Squadron until he was shot down and became a Prisoner of War on
October 28th 1941. For four years, Wally had made many escape attempts
and dug a number of tunnels before being sent to Stalag Luft III where
his greatest escape took place. Wally designed and built three tunnels
called "Tom", "Dick" and "Harry", both going 30ft below the ground,
heading straight for the woods. Unfortunetly one of the tunnels was
discovered and Wally got sent to a different POW Camp before the escape
began. When the War was reaching the end, Wally was set free and and
returned to Canada where he lived the rest of his life.
In 1963 Wally was hired as the Technical advisor for John Sturges's
Motion Picture version of Paul Brickhill's Novel "The Great Escape". He
returned to Germany where he worked full time for a whole year making
sure the film was authentic to the actual escape. Wally Floody died of
natural causes in 1998.
He was awarded the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) after World War II in 1945 after building and designing the Tunnels from the Great Escape.
