INTERESTING STORY ABOUT WW II
Oh and BTW - a TRUE STORY - No Snopes issue.....
Starting in 1941, an increasing number of British airmen found
themselves as the involuntary guests of the Third Reich, and the
Crown was casting-about for ways and means to facilitate their escape. Now
obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a useful and accurate map,
one showing not only where-stuff-was, but also showing the locations of
"safe houses", where a POW on-the-lam could go for food and shelter.
Paper maps had some real drawbacks: They make a lot of noise when
you open and fold them, they wear-out rapidly, and if they get wet,
they turn into mush. Someone in MI-5 (similar to America's CIA)
got the idea of printing escape maps on silk.
It's durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny wads, and unfolded as many
times as needed, and makes no noise what-so-ever.
At that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that
had perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was
John Waddington, Ltd. When approached by the government, the firm
was only too happy to do its bit for the war effort.
By pure coincidence, Waddington was also the U.K. licensee
for the popular American board game, Monopoly. As it happened,
"games and pastimes" was a category of item qualified for insertion into
"CARE packages", dispatched by the International Red Cross, to prisoners of
war.
Under the strictest of secrecy, in a securely guarded and inaccessible old
workshop on the grounds of Waddington's, a group of sworn-to-secrecy
employees began mass-producing escape maps, keyed
to each region of Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were located
(Red Cross packages were delivered to prisoners in accordance with that same
regional system). When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny
dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece.
As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington's also
managed to add: A playing token, containing a small magnetic compass, and
a two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together.
Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian, and
French currency were hidden within the piles of Monopoly money! British and
American air-crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission,
how to identify a "rigged" Monopoly set ----- by means of a tiny red dot, one
cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner
of the Free Parking square! Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POWS who
successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the
rigged Monopoly sets. Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely, since
the British Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in still
another, future war.
The story wasn't de-classified until 2007, when the surviving craftsmen from
Waddington's, as well as the firm itself, were finally honoured in a public ceremony.
Oh and BTW - a TRUE STORY - No Snopes issue.....
Starting in 1941, an increasing number of British airmen found
themselves as the involuntary guests of the Third Reich, and the
Crown was casting-about for ways and means to facilitate their escape. Now
obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a useful and accurate map,
one showing not only where-stuff-was, but also showing the locations of
"safe houses", where a POW on-the-lam could go for food and shelter.
Paper maps had some real drawbacks: They make a lot of noise when
you open and fold them, they wear-out rapidly, and if they get wet,
they turn into mush. Someone in MI-5 (similar to America's CIA)
got the idea of printing escape maps on silk.
It's durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny wads, and unfolded as many
times as needed, and makes no noise what-so-ever.
At that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that
had perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was
John Waddington, Ltd. When approached by the government, the firm
was only too happy to do its bit for the war effort.
By pure coincidence, Waddington was also the U.K. licensee
for the popular American board game, Monopoly. As it happened,
"games and pastimes" was a category of item qualified for insertion into
"CARE packages", dispatched by the International Red Cross, to prisoners of
war.
Under the strictest of secrecy, in a securely guarded and inaccessible old
workshop on the grounds of Waddington's, a group of sworn-to-secrecy
employees began mass-producing escape maps, keyed
to each region of Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were located
(Red Cross packages were delivered to prisoners in accordance with that same
regional system). When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny
dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece.
As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington's also
managed to add: A playing token, containing a small magnetic compass, and
a two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together.
Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian, and
French currency were hidden within the piles of Monopoly money! British and
American air-crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission,
how to identify a "rigged" Monopoly set ----- by means of a tiny red dot, one
cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner
of the Free Parking square! Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POWS who
successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the
rigged Monopoly sets. Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely, since
the British Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in still
another, future war.
The story wasn't de-classified until 2007, when the surviving craftsmen from
Waddington's, as well as the firm itself, were finally honoured in a public ceremony.