4. Pipe Dreams
The easy part of the escape plan was getting into the air vents, where they did things like stitch together the lifeboat. They got out of their cells, but they had to get out of the entire prison in order to successfully escape. The air vents opened up into a utility corridor, which was unguarded. They scaled a series of pipes inside it to climb a full 30 feet up to the ceiling. Doing so by themselves was one thing. For the real escape, they had to do that climb while hauling a raft that weighed as much as 50 raincoats.
At the ceiling, the ventilator was screwed in. The men managed to get the rivets out and replaced them with some that they had designed out of a bar of soap. All in all, putting together the escape plan – from gathering their materials to sawing through the air ventilation shafts with Frank playing the accordion, to sewing a raft — took about six months. Soon, they would find out if their well-heeled plan would actually work. If it would, it would make all of the other prison escapes that they had taken part in look like child’s play.
