War hero Kenneth Price was part of The Great Escape from Stalag Luft III prison camp in 1944
THE remarkable wartime story of Kenneth Price which included flying Lancaster bombers and capture by the Germans was retold by his son Alistair Russell Price of Henley who was guest speaker at a recent meeting of Alcester and District Local History Society.
In his presentation, titled, What did you do in the War, Dad? Alistair Price said his father, Kenneth, was born on 4th October 1919 and was an identical twin. He came from a poor background but won a scholarship at the age of 13 to King Henry VIII School in Coventry where he matriculated with credit.
He became a reporter with the Coventry Evening Telegraph and was called up to the RAF on 1st September 1939 and chose to be a navigator.
His initial training was at Catterick in Yorkshire and he then joined Bomber Command and trained on a Fairey Battle (often nicknamed the Flying Coffin) and later flew in Lancaster bombers. In 1941 he was promoted to flying officer and the following year he joined the Pathfinders who flew their
Lancasters ahead of the main bomber force and dropped flares to mark the targets.
He was promoted again to squadron leader and met his future wife who was a corporal in the WAAF.
Altogether he flew 58 missions. Aircrew were normally put on ground duties after reaching 60 missions and the life expectancy for bomber crews was five missions - 38,000 bomber crew members died during the Second World War.
His last flight aboard a Lancaster was in 1943 aboard Q-Queeny, a plane which is still preserved at
Hendon’s RAF Museum. Although Kenneth Price was the most senior member of the crew, it was the pilot who was in command.
On 27th July 1943 Kenneth Price took part in a photographic mission aboard a Mosquito combat aircraft as a last-minute replacement navigator but the plane was hit by enemy flak over Holland.
The plane caught fire and his leg was burned but he escaped from the cockpit and parachuted down even though the parachute was set up for the original six-foot tall navigator.
He landed in Holland, badly injured, and the local resistance took his uniform and dog-tags. From then on he was dressed as a peasant and hidden in a church.
Unfortunately, he was betrayed by a priest and taken by the Gestapo and in order to obtain information he was beaten and suffered broken ribs as well as threatened with guns containing blanks.
He was saved by a Luftwaffe officer (who turned out to be a Romanian SS officer) and taken to the hospital in a transit camp and then to the prison camp Stalag Luft 3.
He remained in this camp from 28th August 1943 until the end of January 1945.
The camp was based in Sagan, now in Poland, and was notable for the great escape which took place on the night of 24th and 25th March 1944.
The camp was built on sandy soil which made the building of shallow tunnels very difficult and the various huts were also raised on stilts. Kenneth Price was allocated Hut 112 and given a new
RAF uniform by the Red Cross.
Four tunnels were started to allow an escape to take place but only one
‘Harry’ was finished, having taken a year to build. The tunnels were built 25 feet deep into the ground, and lined with boards taken from the beds and bed linen was used to muffle the sound of the carts running along rails carrying the soil.
On the day chosen the temperature was minus 20 degrees with snow on the ground.
The tunnel came to the surface 10 to 15 feet short of the trees. All the prisoners were given a place in the queue to escape and Kenneth’s number was 182. Eventually, it was decided to limit the escapees to 100 but only 76 prisoners got out; three to the UK, 23 returned to the camp and 50 were shot on the orders of Hitler.
With the end of the war imminent, the Russian army was approaching.
The German guards took the prisoners away from the camp and forced them to walk 500 miles to avoid the Russians in Sagan, but eventually they returned to the camp and allied tanks entered on the 2nd May 1945 and the prisoners were repatriated. One German Officer surrendered to Kenneth Price.
On arriving back in UK, he received a tax demand for his earnings while incarcerated in the POW camp.
Kenneth Price married his fiancée in June 1945 and was demobbed in April 1946 after which he worked for the Civil Aviation Authority until his retirement due to ill health in 1978.
He died in April 1980 aged 60.
