List of helicopter prison escapes

[SKATIN]

Pretty cool list of successful and unsuccessful prison escapes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_helicopter_prison_escapes

Of course well all know one who was unsuccessful:sifone:

[Tommy Gun]

One of the St. Louis traffic pilots/reporters got hijacked a number of years ago with the intent of breaking someone out of the federal pen in Marion, IL.

While flying the helicopter, Allen Barklage wrestled the handgun away from the hijacker and shot her to death. Here is the story...

May 24, 1978, (not the 1980s) had started off a fine spring day. Barklage, then a 30-year-old charter pilot, was expecting another relaxing flight when he agreed to take Barbara Oswald, who claimed to be a real estate agent, to examine property near Cape Girardeau, Mo.

At first, everything was routine as the two talked amiably about choppers and the weather. Suddenly, Oswald put a gun to the back of Barklage's head, ripped off his headphones and told him to fly to Marion to pick up three inmates at the penitentiary.

As Barklage soon learned, Oswald was no flying novice. She had been an air traffic controller in the Army and seemed to know the helicopter as well as he did. But Barklage, who had seen a co-pilot get half his face shot off during a mission in Vietnam, wasn't going down without a fight.

"I told her the only way to do this ... was to land without the doors on. That way the prisoners could run to the helicopter, jump in and take off," Barklage said in a 1992 News-Democrat interview about his plan to ditch the helicopter and make a run for it.

But Oswald had her own ideas -- which ultimately led to her downfall. She decided to remove the doors herself while the copter was in the air. But when the door opened, the loud noise startled her, giving Barklage an opportunity to grab her gun. When Oswald grabbed a second gun off the floor, a struggle ensued.

"During that time, the helicopter was out of control," Barklage said. "It went straight up and came down in a nose dive. We went from 2,200 feet to 600 feet."

But while Oswald was trying to get her gun cocked, Barklage fired five times, hitting the woman twice and killing her. Even so, he wasn't out of danger. When he finally landed outside the prison in the early evening, he was almost shot by guards who thought he was in on the break.

"I was more scared than I was in Vietnam because I had more time to think about it," he said in 1992. "I thought, 'After two years in 'Nam, here I am going to get shot by a civilian.' But I made it.'"

[glassdave]

I think i read somewhere the wire strung across prison yards to prevent helicopter escapes is loosely known as Kramer wire . . . . .

[rainmn]

I think i read somewhere the wire strung across prison yards to prevent helicopter escapes is loosely known as Kramer wire . . . . .

I think that was in "Speed Kills."