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Great Escape pilot Sandy Gunn flew from Wick on his last mission





Drew Macleod from Wick talks about his bid to highlight the Caithness connections of WWII pilot Flt Lt Sandy Gunn who was killed by the Nazis after The Great Escape in 1944

Drew MacLeod from Wick discovered the Caithness connections of a WWII pilot murdered by Nazi agents in 1944 after The Great Escape.
Drew MacLeod from Wick discovered the Caithness connections of a WWII pilot murdered by Nazi agents in 1944 after The Great Escape.

My acquaintance with Sandy Gunn's story began in 2003. In the summer of that year we took a holiday cottage just outside Arbroath intending to explore the countryside and towns of the area.

One day, we went to Kirriemuir and there, just off the main street in an old very small former electricity board office, I chanced across a World War II museum. The three or four small rooms were chock-a-block with all manner of items, a cornucopia of delights.

Flt Lt Sandy Gunn's father was born in the Latheron area and he flew from Wick on his last fateful mission during WWII.
Flt Lt Sandy Gunn's father was born in the Latheron area and he flew from Wick on his last fateful mission during WWII.

The museum was founded and run solely by an elderly gentleman called Richard Moss who had devoted his retirement to running the museum and collecting exhibits. He told me that as well as what was in the museum the attic of his house was crammed with things he had no room to display.

Sadly, I wasn't to know Richard for long because he died just a few years after I met him but in that relatively short time we corresponded a lot and I interviewed him for the John O'Groat Journal.

But on to Sandy Gunn.

While wandering through the museum, amazed at the embarrassment of riches, I spotted a very mundane looking dog-eared old school jotter. I nearly walked past it but something made me pick it up. All the pages were blank, bar three, but handwritten on those three pages were the names of the 50 escapees from Stalag Luft 3 who had been murdered by the Nazis in 1944 after The Great Escape.

Sandy Gunn as a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft III. Picture: The family of Flight Lieutenant A.D.M. Gunn (60340) R.A.F.V.R. and Spitfire AA810 Restoration Ltd.
Sandy Gunn as a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft III. Picture: The family of Flight Lieutenant A.D.M. Gunn (60340) R.A.F.V.R. and Spitfire AA810 Restoration Ltd.

As I looked down the list of names, one caught my eye – Alastair Donald Macintosh Gunn. Because Gunn was a Caithness name I idly wondered could there be a Caithness connection to The Great Escape? Little did I know at the time.

I never did find out the origin of the old jotter but with the help of a book, The Gallant Company by Canadian historian Jonathan Vance, a rivetting account of the escape and its aftermath, I managed to assemble a few facts about Sandy Gunn.

The most important discovery was that Sandy was flying from RAF Wick when he was shot down and captured in Norway returning from a photo reconnaissance mission.

The remains of Flt Lt Gunn's spitfire which had flown from Wick in 1942 before crashing in Norway.
The remains of Flt Lt Gunn's spitfire which had flown from Wick in 1942 before crashing in Norway.

There are a few references to Sandy Gunn's time in Stalag Luft 3 in The Gallant Company. When the three tunnels, known as Tom, Dick and Harry, were under construction Sandy Gunn is mentioned as one of the regular diggers.

As can be imagined, food was always in short supply but every so often each barracks was allowed a sack of oats. Most of the prisoners had no idea what to do with these till Sandy showed them how to make porridge, a nourishing dish that made the best use of the oats.

Nothing is known of Sandy's part in the escape itself other than that part of the tunnel fell in on him and he had to be dug out by the men immediately in front and behind him. This happens to Charles Bronson in The Great Escape film but his character is based loosely on Ivo Tonder, a fellow digger of Sandy's who, being claustrophobic, suffered terribly in the narrow tunnels. Perhaps Sandy Gunn's experience with the cave-in was added to Bronson's role for a more dramatic effect?

Sandy Gunn pictured in 1941. Picture: The family of Flight Lieutenant A.D.M. Gunn (60340) R.A.F.V.R. and Spitfire AA810 Restoration Ltd.
Sandy Gunn pictured in 1941. Picture: The family of Flight Lieutenant A.D.M. Gunn (60340) R.A.F.V.R. and Spitfire AA810 Restoration Ltd.

In the film the 50 recaptured prisoners are all murdered together on a sunny hillside. The reality, no less final, seems somehow even more ugly and horrific. The men were taken from their prison in small groups by the Gestapo and driven many miles then shot by the side of the road in the dark or early morning light.

On March 28, 1944, Sandy and nine other prisoners were brought to Gorlitz Prison on the Polish/German border. Interrogations there were particularly brutal.

Early on the morning of April 6, 1944, a truck arrived at Gorlitz Prison. A Luftwaffe sergeant produced a list from his pocket and Sandy Gunn and five others were taken away. Somewhere between Gorlitz and Breslau the truck was stopped and all six men were murdered by the side of the road.

The murder of 50 of the escapees was on the direct orders of Adolf Hitler but the man in charge on the scene when Sandy was killed was Gestapo chief Dr Wilhelm Scharpwinkel though the actual killing is believed to have been done by a subordinate called Erwin Lux.

Lux was killed in fighting at Breslau towards the end of the war but Scharpwinkel was captured by the Russians.

Sandy Gunn appears in a previous publication showing the men executed by the Gestapo after the Great Escape in 1944. At the time it said Gunn was 'murdered by unknown Gestapo' but Drew Macleod names the agents as Lux and Scharpwinkel.
Sandy Gunn appears in a previous publication showing the men executed by the Gestapo after the Great Escape in 1944. At the time it said Gunn was 'murdered by unknown Gestapo' but Drew Macleod names the agents as Lux and Scharpwinkel.

I said at the beginning that when the name Gunn in that old school jotter caught my eye I wondered about a Caithness connection. Well the fact that Sandy Gunn's ill-fated mission was flown from RAF Wick provided that connection but to my surprise I found another even more pertinent one.

Although Sandy Gunn was born and brought up in Auchterarder, Perthshire, his father Dr James Turner Gunn was a native of Latheron Parish in Caithness. Doctor Gunn who died in January 1968 spent 52 years in Auchterarder and had been made a Free Man of the Burgh. He and Sandy's mother Adelaide Lucy Frances are buried in Auchterarder Cemetery.

Sandy Gunn is remembered along with "the lang toon's" other war dead on a plaque on the cemetery gate and his ashes lie in Poznan Old Garrison Cemetery in Poland, grave reference 8.D.7.

Related article:

RAF Wick Gate Guardian memorial appeal now garners international support – funds sought to commemorate pilots and crew who defended the country during WWII


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