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Home / Whanganui Chronicle

Ceremony for POW escapee executed during WWII

merania.karauria@wanganuichronicle.co.nz
Whanganui Chronicle·
4 Apr, 2014 08:00 PM3 mins to read

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John Pohe

John Pohe

Flying officer John Porokoru Patapu Pohe was one of 76 prisoners of war who escaped from Stalag Luft III on March 24, 1944.

Today Opaea Marae at Taihape will honour their son who was one of the 50 recaptured and executed by firing squad.

A dedication ceremony will take place at 2pm where his only brother, Kawana, will give a brief introduction to the documentary Turangaarere, Born To Fly.

Flying officer (FO) Pohe and 75 others' bid for freedom was immortalised as The Great Escape.

Born at Putiki, Turangaarere is the name of the farm near Taihape where flying officer Pohe grew up and where he left from to go to war. The dedication ceremony will be followed by a presentation of the exhibits from the Paraparaumu Museum of Aviation including models of the Handley Page and Halifax bombers flown by FO Pohe in the war.

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"I think it is terrific, it is something I have been wanting to do," Mr Pohe said of the dedication to his older brother.

Mr Pohe, who now resides in Las Vegas and has returned especially for the dedication, was 3 years old when his older brother was 26 and left to fly in World War II. There were eight sisters in between the two brothers.

In August 1943, FO Pohe flew his four-engine big bomber Halifax targeting industry in Hanover.

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Seven hundred aircraft were in the raid over occupied Europe when the Halifax was hit by flak, which took out one of the engines.

The daring airman put his aircraft into a nosedive.

From 23,000ft, FO Pohe plunged his Halifax down to 2000ft and extinguished the fire. He was now in control again, but of the 10 crew, only three were left - the other seven had baled out in the descent.

With instrumentation out, FO Pohe looked for the North Star over the English Channel to guide him back to Britain. But the damage to the engine had taken its toll. He had to ditch the plane. Canadian tailgunner Tom Thomson, who was on the Halifax that fateful night in August, said they braced themselves for the ditching.

"It was expert flying to ditch an aeroplane like the Halifax - it was a hell of a job. I was slammed against the balrick and Johnny hit his head which split open when we landed."

The Halifax ditched intact and broke in two after impact.

Mr Thomson and bomb-aimer Dave Wells got down the wing to where the dinghy would come up.

"Johnny wasn't coming out and Dave went back where he was just coming to."

The plane had ditched in the English Channel close to Brest in France. The Luftwaffe spotted the dinghy and the flying officer was separated from his crew and taken deep into Nazi occupied territory.

The two crew were shipped to Frankfurt.

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FO Pohe was one of 10,000 prisoners in a camp.

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