Fabric Escape and Evasion Maps

Fabric escape maps were made for pilots, soldiers and spies who risked finding themselves behind enemy lines and needing a route home. At first they were improvised by POWs, hand-drawn on whatever cloth was available; later they were officially printed on silk or rayon and issued as part of escape-and-evasion kits. Waterproof, durable, silent to handle and easy to conceal, they were ideally suited to covert use. The earliest recorded example dates to 1918, when Allied prisoners escaping from Holzminden POW camp in Germany used maps sewed into their clothing to get to the Dutch border. During the Second World War, Britain’s MI9, under Christopher Clayton Hutton, refined the concept for Allied airmen. A prolific inventor of covert espionage devices, Hutton is thought to have been an inspiration for Ian Fleming’s conception of Q Branch in the James Bond novels. Handmade escape maps also appeared at Colditz, and were used in the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III. Among their most famous users was fighter ace Chuck Yeager, later the first person to break the sound barrier, who used his silk map after being shot down over occupied France in 1944 to make his way to Spain by the "Chemin de la Liberté". The tradition endured into the Cold War and beyond: CIA U-2 pilot Gary Powers carried a cloth escape map when shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960; SAS units used them during the 1991 Gulf War, as recalled by Andy McNab in "Bravo Two Zero"; and USAF F-16 pilot Scott O’Grady used an evasion chart when shot down over Bosnia in 1995.