TV-tip: Alcatraz – Escaping The Rock (21h, Discovery Channel) – Knack.be

Sunday 27/3, 21:00, Discovery Channel

Frank Morris, the brothers Clarence and John Anglin and Allen West had months to plan their gewerkten all prepared to perfection. Papier-mâché (ingredients: soap and toilet paper) and their own hair they had pieced together heads who were doing the guards believe they obediently lay in hunbed while they were preparing their escape, and during the escape itself. were hitting the island them with an inflatable boat of raincoats. The unfortunate Allen West was on that night the ventilation shaft not open and remained in his cell. No one knows whether the three other gangsters survived the crossing or drowned in the cold water of the bay.

Fifty-three years later, three Dutch scientists have the “escape of the century once again repeated. When engineer Olivier Hoes was working on a model to predict water levels and flows in the San Francisco Bay, noted his colleague Rolf Hut that they therefore could not only calculate the flow on that night in 1962, but also whether the mainland reached a feasible was for Morris and the Anglin brothers

ROLF HUT:. When Olivier showed me his work, I could not take my eyes off that island in the middle of the bay. With the help of Fedor Baart we can calculate what the ideal time to take the tour. It was a unique experience, use your knowledge to shed more light on this historical event. When we then himself got into the boat, it really was an adventure story

Does your view changed on that escape

HUT.? You learn on least how much courage they had, or how desperate they must have been, of course.

apart from that I mainly been in awe of what they did to make this happen.

As dozens raincoats steal without anyone notice

HUT:. Exactly. I have also seen the workshop where they have the coats glued together. It is a fairly high technical trick that they have done there. Not that I want to extol them, they were really hardcore criminals

And yet, the word “heroes” quite often

HUT:.. On creative plane is also particularly what they have done. If my students are as inventive as these men, they are as an engineer what I am concerned. But if they then similarly try to rob a bank, they have as a human being, of course, failed. (Laughs)

Jorik Leemans

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