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

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

Khalid Elhassan - September 13, 2020

A Downed Pilot Who Ran Away in a Stolen Enemy Plane and Other Historic Escapes
Reunion of Horst Schopis and Richard Partridge in 1977. Pintrest

22. Aftermath of a Dramatic Escape

As to Captain Partridge and Lieutenant Bostock, the Norwegians took them for Germans, and were highly skeptical of their claims that they were British officers. They eventually convinced the Norwegians, and were set free to rejoin their countrymen. By then, the British had all but lost the Norwegian Campaign. After hiking through the mountains, and commandeering a car, Partridge and Bostock made it to a British-held port, just in time to escape capture.

A Downed Pilot Who Ran Away in a Stolen Enemy Plane and Other Historic Escapes
Horst Schopis during the filming of ‘Into the White’. Last Bass Outpost

They were evacuated to Britain, but their freedom did not last long. On June 13th, 1940, they took part in a failed raid that sought to sink the German battleship Scharnhorst, and both were shot down. Lieutenant Bostock was killed. Captain Partridge was captured and spent the rest of the war in a German POW camp. He died in 1990. Lieutenant Horst Schopis lived to the ripe old age of 99, dying in 2011, one year before the release of Into the White.

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