Alcatraz: The Great Escape

The Great Escape Can you beat The Rock? On the night of January 11, 1962, three escapees, John Anglin, Clarence Anglin, and Frank Morris attempted the most famous escape attempt ever, from Alcatraz. Alcatraz was a maximum security prison on the San Francisco Bay. It was located at the closest a mile from all land. It was a military fort in the 1840’s and a military prison in the 1860’s. It later closed in 1963 due to money errors. (Hopkinson).It was reopened by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1934 for the worst prisoners. The prisoners had a clever escape plan. With lots of confusion and evidence there many theories, including life or death. With the one prisoners bodies found the, the bag of personal items, and the other bodies never found, the Anglin brothers and Frank Morris could not have escaped from the maximum-security prison, they died. The three man escape plan was ingenious. Allen West had found a flaw in one of the fans on one of the air vents on the roof from the back of his cell block (Hopkinson). They had managed to chip away at the

There have been few people to make the 1-2 mile swim across the San Francisco Bay to Alcatraz. The FBI have concluded that the homemade raft of raincoats had tipped or had not floated. However the water of the San Francisco Bay on the night of the escape had been too cold to swim in, the water was approximately 50 degrees fahrenheit (No Way Out). After about a half an hour they would have died of hypothermia. The water in showers were heated so the prisoners that thought of escaping could not adjust to the cold water. The few people who did make it had trained for the swim and had many hours of practice. The prisoners had no physical exercise other than pushups and situps so they could have not gotten very far. This is why the prisoners could not have escaped, they could not have made the swim but instead