| Director | Roy Ward Baker |
|---|---|
| Box office | £3 million |
Luftwaffe fighter pilot Franz von Werra is shot down during the Battle of Britain and captured. At the 'London Cage', the military intelligence POW reception centre, he wagers with his RAF interrogator that he will escape within six months. At Trent Park House outside London, von Werra is placed with other officers and their conversations are bugged, but a wary von Werra is too cautious to give much away, mocking the surveillance listeners by decrying the obvious methods.
Initially, von Werra is sent to No 1 prisoner-of-war camp Grizedale Hall in the Furness area of Lancashire (now Cumbria). During a group walk rest stop, he times a distraction to drop over a wall on which he is lying and escapes into the hills. It takes an intense manhunt by troops and police to recapture him.
Subsequently, von Werra is sent to a more secure POW camp (based on the Hayes Conference Centre) near Swanwick, Derbyshire. During a German air raid, he and four others escape through a tunnel. The others pair up, but von Werra goes it alone. Reaching Codnor Park railway station, he impersonates a Dutch pilot and claims his Wellington bomber had crashed while on a secret mission. The station master telephones the police to take him to the nearest airfield, RAF Hucknall. Von Werra tricks the RAF duty officer into sending a car. The police arrive first, but with much bravado he delays them until the RAF car arrives. He gets to the airfield and spots a Hawker Hurricane. When his story starts to fray, von Werra creeps away and tries to steal an experimental Hawker Hurricane, getting as far as sitting in it and starting the engine before being caught.
Along with many other POWs, von Werra is then sent by ship to Canada, arriving at Halifax, Nova Scotia. On the train ride across the country, while the guards are distracted, he escapes by jumping from a window near Smiths Falls, Ontario. Making his way south hitching rides, von Werra finds the St. Lawrence River not as frozen solid as he has been led to believe. Stealing a rowboat, he pushes it over the ice until he reaches the free-flowing section. Von Werra reaches the still-neutral United States almost frozen to death.
Back in the United Kingdom the RAF interrogator receives a postcard from von Werra, featuring a photograph of the Statue of Liberty, informing him that he has lost his bet.
The film's epilogue states: Despite the efforts of the Canadian Government to obtain his return, and of the United States authorities to hold him, Von Werra crossed the border into Mexico. Travelling by way of Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and Spain, he reached Berlin on 18 April 1941. On October 25th of the same year, while on patrol, his plane was seen to dive into the sea. No trace of Von Werra was found.