Captivity
The ordeal of POWs started with a roller coaster ride of emotions into enemy captivity. From the sudden shock of having to bail out at 18,000 feet, only hours after being in the safety of their homes, to avoiding injury in a risky parachute jump in the dark. Things just got worse as the next step was to evade capture, not just from troops but a very unsympathetic and hostile population that saw them as “terror fliers.” Going into hiding and then contacting an “escape line” happened to just a lucky few. Most were inevitably captured and this is when the psychology of these airmen was pushed to the limits. This started with the demoralizing rounds of interrogation, all the time not knowing what had happened to their fellow aircrew, to being in a hopeless and dangerous situation.

Bleak Situation
Once in a POW camp POWs suffered from starvation rations, overcrowding, the extremes of a seasonal climate, and being incarcerated for an unknown length of time. Malnourished and under constant threat of diseases the airmen were dragged to the lowest of depths so their will to resist was completely broken. For the POWs, under these dire circumstances, the easiest response would have been to resign to the situation and drift aimlessly through the war in captivity.

Escape Proof
The authorities, through the hard lessons of running POW camps, had done everything possible to make the camp fully escape proof, to discourage escapers from even thinking about it. From the geographic location in the heart of the Third Reich, well distanced from neutral countries, to locating the camps on sandy soils so any signs of digging would be a dead give away. Every detail of the camp had been thought through from building the huts on stilts to the burying of microphones beneath the camps barbed-wire fences to pick up any underground noises.

History of Project Failures
The most notorious of the special prison camps for airmen was Stalag Luft III, the home of the most notorious escape artists in the Third Reich. But it was a history of failure at Stalag Luft III, the POWs had lost or abandoned at least fifty tunnels in a thirty-month time frame. Almost all tunnels were discovered much to the dismay of the POWs who had seen countless escape attempts fail. This was partly due to the lack of governance. Escape was a private enterprise were literally one tunnel could bump into another. But there was a positive, through the school of hard knocks they had honed their skills. The arrival of Roger Bushell, arch escaper, codenamed ‘Big X' changed all of this.

The Plan
The starting point for the project was in March of 1943 with the move to a new camp, the North Compound, created to relieve some of the overcrowding. From the outset the move to and taking up of brand-new quarters would cause confusion and provide new opportunities, and all sorts of possibilities for escape.

Bushell was very determined, ruthless, and believed that any escape had to be well organized. He introduced rigorous discipline and a governance framework were no one could escape without full authority. He set up the camp’s Escape Committee which was faced with the conundrum of determining the best possible approach to escape, and this varied depending on the available resources and the overall risks. By analyzing the resources and risks, they could determine the best Return on Investment (ROI). Bushell wanted to attempt something different were the investment was high but so was the payback. He set to work planning a mass escape on a scale never before attempted, freeing 200 prisoners in one go. He set up departments responsible for different aspects of escape, for example,  Intelligence Gathering, Tunnel Engineering, Equipment and Tool Making, Document Production, Map Making, as shown in the figure below.

How did a Project Emerge
With very limited resources somehow the POWs in Stalag Luft III organized this project of staggering proportions. It is not a question of how did a project emerge but how could it emerge? The answer is complex. These were the hardened escapers, the finest from all camps, who had suffered years of oppression which only increased their determination to reach an objective, literally one step at a time. At each step there was a hurdle, some of these seemingly insurmountable. Yet the POWs took on every problem and doggedly wrestled it till a solution was found.

Project Hurdles
In relating this back to the field of project management today a starting point is to look at one of the 9 project management knowledge areas and how this was applied to the project. In this example, risk management was critical. Bushell was able to prioritize the project hurdles and focus resources on the resolution of each of these. He did this by identifying and evaluating the risks. There were many risks to the project, including the discovery of the escape plot, dangerous work in the project, and escaping itself. The intricacies of these risks had to be identified and managed through carefully thought-out mitigation plans.

The first area of risk was escape plot discovery. The shorter the timeline, the less likely it was that the escape plot would be discovered. The principal risk for the escape committee lay in the detection of the escape project through traces of the tunnel exposed or poorly hidden, or nosy ferrets uncovering something. To mitigate this security was paramount, a system had to be set up to mask a mass of illicit activities.

The second area of risk involved the dangers of tunnel engineering, hazardous work where men were risking their lives due to potential risks in tunnel construction and collapse, and the accumulation of bad air in tunnels.

Risk Management
Each department was responsible for managing the risks associated with its activities by employing risk management strategies. For the first risk, escape plot discovery, the following strategies were employed:

• A major risk was discovery of the trap doors, and by paying great attention to their concealment this risk was mitigated. Weeks were spent in designing these trap doors in such a way that they blended into the surroundings of the room.
• Ferrets expected tunneling to be ongoing, so contingency plans were drawn up in case one of the tunnels was discovered. Multiple tunnels were built in parallel in an effort to have a fallback route in case one was found.
• Some wire escape jobs, accomplished by breaking through the wire, were encouraged so as to leave the impression that escape attempts were still being carried out. It would look strange if all escape attempts suddenly stopped.
• By putting many resources into cover-up activities like diversion and sand dispersal, risk was mitigated in concealing traces of the tunnel.
• Nosy ferrets were a constant risk that was mitigated through a system of tracking, and Bushell kept a list of ferrets that were deemed dangerous to the project.
• Another mitigation strategy was reading enemy intent, and this was done by continually monitoring what ferrets were thinking through contacts with friendly ferrets and reading between the lines.

For the second risk, dangers with tunnel engineering, the following strategies were employed:

• To mitigate the risk of tunnel collapse, pains were taken to ensure that the tunnels were level. Any movement in an uneven tunnel could catch the supports or shoring and cause a collapse.
• Tunnelers had to devise a system to ensure that tunnels ended up where planned, pointing in the right direction and built at a level depth.
• Everyday tunnel engineering would mitigate risk by allowing continual careful scrutiny of the tunnel for signs of danger and potential tunnel collapse.
• A ventilation system was installed to bring air right up the tunnel face.

Conclusions
The above example demonstrates the application of one of the project management knowledge areas. In researching the complete story one of the many surprises was that the Great Escape encompassed everything encountered and done in a typical modern project today, that is the processes the POWs followed and the 9 project management knowledge areas of PMBOK. This was not something expected because the field of project management did not get established till well after Second World War. Also the POWs still had to figure out these areas.

So how does this relate to the field of project management today? Many projects today are initiated with clear objectives, executive sponsorship, and healthy budgets, but they still fail. Other projects have no budgets and numerous obstacles in their way, and yet they succeed. This project can be viewed as one of these successes.

Photos: Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force Academy Library's Special Collections