My wife and I visited Alcatraz earlier this year and the place still fascinates me… it’s a shame the rest of San Francisco wasn’t as interesting, but that’s a different topic entirely.
Anyway, I’ve just finished reading Six Against The Rock, Clark Howard’s book on the Battle of Alcatraz in 1946, which got me thinking about the various escape attempts from the Island, including the one covered in Howard’s book.
I won’t re-hash the specifics of the 1946 escape attempt here, but from what I’ve read it was basically foiled by sheer bad luck on the escapee’s part, and had one of the guards not inadvertently pocketed a vital key instead of putting it back on the keyhook where it belonged, the escapees would have been able to get out of the cellhouse with their hostage guards, and from there the plan was to hijack the prison launch to effect an escape back to the mainlaind, where a change of clothes and a getaway car were waiting.
How likely to succeed was this, though? I can think of any one of a number of scenarios involving the hijacked launch being intercepted by the Coast Guard or the Police, and even if they got to the mainland and into a getaway car, there would have been an unbelievable manhunt on for them- it seems unlikely they’d even be able to get to Los Angeles, never mind Mexico, without being apprehended.
Assuming the escapees had gotten off Alcatraz, did they actually have any chance of making a clean getaway, or was the escape attempt doomed even before they started planning it?
The OP pretty much covers all the material I would have suggested.
I can only add that even if they had gotten away, these guys were criminals. Sooner or later they’d do something illegal to support themselves and get picked up again.
I’ve been to every state except Hawaii (and we’re going there in November, completing our goal of visiting all 50 states) and SF is one of my very favorite cities in the country.
How about opening a thread in another forum about your trip?
I saw a program on the history channel last week about the topic. The guys were unlucky. Could they have escaped?
I think there are still six people who did escape that are unaccounted for. I tend to believe the official line that they all perished in the attempt- somehow by now, I would have thought that some firm evidence of them being alive would have surfaced (something more than a postcard from South America).
You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Then again, you’d think that if anyone has the ingenuity to mastermind and execute a successful “home run” escape from Alcatraz (one in which they manage to get off the Island and then eventually manage to get across the Border to Mexico) they would also know to (and presumably manage to) keep a very, very low profile pretty much for the rest of their lives, even if they were living in a small Mexican fishing village somewhere on the Yucatan Peninsular…
Most prisoners find their minds get as shut up inside as their bodies do - a concept we call “institutionalized”. The prison becomes their world. So while some of them can develop some incredibly complex plans for getting out of the prison, their mind and plan stops at the edge of the prison grounds. They’ll have a plan for getting out of prison but none for staying out of prison. And let’s face it; they couldn’t stay out of prison before and that was when they were just a regular criminal and not an escaped convict.
I don’t think any of them were exactly the Moriarties of the underworld, and again I am unclear of what support mechanisms they would have onshore. It is worth noting that in the one confirmed instance of an escapee making it the shore he was recognised and recaptured after being taken to hospital.