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A Downed Pilot Who Ran Away in a Stolen Enemy Plane and Other Historic Escapes

Khalid Elhassan September 13, 2020 28 min

A P=51 making a low level pass on a German airplane. Art Station

31. Survival and Escape in Scandinavian Snows

‘Into the White’ poster. DVD Release Dates

In 2012, one of WWII’s more dramatic but lesser-known survival and escape stories hit the silver screen with the release of Into the White. Set during the Norwegian Campaign, the movie depicts the travails of the crews of a German Heinkel He 111 and a British Blackburn Skua after they shot each other down. They crashed not far from each other, and were then forced to come together to escape a wintry death and survive the harsh elements.

Based on true events, although jazzed up and dramatized, the movie’s core event actually happened. On April 27^th, 1940, Captain Richard Thomas Partridge of the British Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm shot down a German Heinkel He 111 bomber in Norway, and was then forced to crash land nearby soon thereafter. Once on the ground, Partridge and his crewmate made contact with the downed German bomber’s surviving crewmen, and the enemies agreed to cooperate. British and German airmen then hung out together, helping each other out, until rescued by a Norwegian ski patrol.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.