10 Incredible Tunnel Escapes

Captured and jailed in 2011, Joaquin Guzmán, aka “El Chapo,” escaped in a laundry basket, only to be arrested and returned to custody three years later, when he disappeared again, this time through a tunnel.

Captured yet again in 2016, he was extradited to the United States in 2017. Convicted of numerous crimes, including drug trafficking, he was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years and remains incarcerated in a U.S. maximum security prison.

His tunnel escape was reported worldwide, but it was no more dramatic than the incredible tunnel escapes on this list. Some of these escapes were successful, others not, which, over the last 225 years, involved prisoners of war (POWs), firefighters, prison inmates, and others.

Related: Ten Jaw-Dropping Tales of Infamous Criminals Who Escaped Justice

10 Libby Prison Tunnel (1864)

The Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, held Union POWs. One account of the February 9, 1864, tunnel escape was provided by Robert Knox Sneden, who, incarcerated in a nearby prison, drew sketches of the event, later painted them in watercolors, and wrote of his comrades-in-arms escape.

By his account, the escape, which included 109 prisoners, was anything but orderly. “Everyone wanted to be first,” he wrote, and their realization that “a few only could get out by daylight” caused them to rush to the mouth of the tunnel. The fact that “the room was now crowded to suffocation” increased their desperation, and the strongest men forced their way to the front, jamming others against the walls.

Despite the disorderly escape, 109 inmates found their way out of the rat-infested prison, but for 51 of them, liberty was short-lived. Forty-nine were recaptured, and two drowned in the James River. The others rejoined the Union Army’s ranks.^[1]

9 Pulaski Tunnel (1910)

Unofficially, the inferno known as The Great Idaho Fire is also called “The Big Burn.” An onsite historical marker erected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forestry Service recounts the disaster, which involved a series of huge forest fires resulting from drought conditions and small fires fanned into big ones by winds of “gale force.”

Despite the efforts of hundreds of firefighters, The Big Burn incinerated three million acres of forest. It also trapped Edward C. Pulaski and his 45-member crew, whom Pulaski led into a mine tunnel, holding them there until the fire had made its way through the timberland. Thanks to Pulaski’s quick thinking and leadership, all but six of his team survived.^[2]

8 “Harry”

After being shot down and captured on May 23, 1940, Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Roger Joyce Bushell joined the Escape Committee at Dulag Luft prison camp, planning escape tunnels. The first was abandoned. Guards discovered the second.

After improving a drainage system, he and his team salvaged the initial tunnel. Testing it, he escaped, and, due to his proficiency in French and German and civilian clothes from a bribed guard, he reached the German-Swiss border. There, he was caught and sent to the Lübeck POW camp.

On the way, he escaped from a transport train with five others. Three were recaptured, but Bushell and his escape partner, Jack Zaphok, remained free until Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the SS, was assassinated. After interrogation by the Gestapo, Zaphok was never seen again, but Bushell was returned to Dulag Luft, rejoining the Escape Committee.

He planned three tunnels, “Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry,” to be dug at the same time. “Dick” was abandoned. “Tom” was discovered. Despite obstacles and challenges, “Harry” led 76 escapees to freedom—initially, at least. All but three would be recaptured, Adolf Hitler ordering 50 of them to be shot, supposedly “while attempting to re-escape.”^[3]

7 Tunnel 57 (1965)

Smithsonian Magazine calls Tunnel 57 “the most successful escape tunnel in the history of the Berlin Wall.” It was executed by German university students with no tools other than shovels and buckets.

Having made his own escape from East Germany in 1961 using a Swiss student’s borrowed passport, Joachim Neumann missed his girlfriend, Crista Gruhle, just as his cohorts missed their families and friends. His first attempt at tunnel escape failed; caught, he was sentenced to 16 months in prison.

In 1965, aided by twelve other men, many of whom had helped previously, Neumann tried again, excavating a football field-length tunnel starting from an abandoned bakery in which the crew slept between work shifts.

Five months later, the hard work paid off. West Berliners crawled through the tunnel to lead East Berlin relatives who knew Neumann’s code word to the tunnel entrance. Despite being discovered, the students escaped, although, in the confusion, a border guard shot and killed a fellow guard. Although the tunnel was demolished, it served its purpose: Neumann married Gruhle, and he and his crew escaped to better lives.

The tunnel is named for the 57 people who escaped through it, “nearly one-fifth of all the successful tunnel escapees who reached their destination throughout nearly three decades.”^[4]

6 Vellore Fort (1995)

The August 15, 1995, tunnel escape of 43 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) cadets from the Vellore Fort prison in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India, raised questions for the India Today news magazine.

How could the escapees dig a 153-foot tunnel 10 feet (3 m) underground, using only two bathroom pipes, each barely 2 feet (0.6 m) long, and one steel plate? How could they swim across a 50-foot (15-m) wide moat, change into dry clothes, and get away under the noses of armed guards in the prison’s towers?

Was the so-called tunnel actually an “unused” drainage pipe choked with weeds and grass?

Authorities’ answers were unconvincing, even ludicrous, reporters suggested, and the bribery of officials was suspected.

Although some regarded the LTTE as “freedom fighters,” Stanford University identifies the group as a separatist militant organization fighting for an independent homeland for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority in northern Sri Lanka. It was active from the early1970s until 2009, when the Sri Lankan government defeated it, the conflict having caused the deaths of an estimated 70,000 people.^[5]

5 Carandiru House of Detention (2001)

Brazil’s Carandiru House of Detention was notorious for violence among its 8,000 inmates and between prisoners and authorities. In one instance, it resulted in 111 deaths when an uprising was quelled. Since its debut in 1956, over 1,300 inmates are estimated to have died violently in the prison.

It’s no wonder that escapes have occurred. Following the July 8, 2001, tunnel escape of 105 prisoners, a second tunnel was discovered. The second tunnel led from the prison hospital toward the city’s sewer system. It had not been completed, though, and no additional escapes occurred.

Twenty-nine of the escapees were recaptured. Apparently, they were gang members who helped organize a prison revolt across Sao Paulo state in February 2000, using cell phones from inside Carandiru to coordinate protests.^[6]

4 Sarposa Prison (2011)

Escaped Taliban prisoners incarcerated in Afghanistan’s maximum security prison explained how “insurgent comrades” on the outside built a tunnel, complete with “lighting and piped air,” to help them escape. Armed with AK-47 rifles, insurgents inside the prison opened cell doors, allowing the prisoners to enter the1,050-foot (320-meter) long tunnel and crawl to freedom. The dirt-floor tunnel, they said, took their confederates five months to build.

Despite light and air, the tunnel was crowded and took 30 minutes to travel “in oppressive and crowded conditions.” The escapees numbered almost 500 fighters, 71 of whom had been recaptured by April 27, 2011.^[7]

3Kerobokan Prison (2017)

Indonesian officials sought to apprehend four escaped Kerobokan Prison inmates who were serving time for drug offenses and fraud.

The fugitives, permitted to leave their cells for prayers, escaped through a hole in the prison’s outer wall that led to a narrow tunnel 36 feet (12 meters) long. The tunnel may have been used for water drainage. Their escape may have been motivated by mistreatment and violent guards.

To date, there has been no report, as far as can be determined, as to whether they were captured. However, the Bali prison, located 2.5 miles (4 km) from Canggu, is reportedly home to rats, cockroaches, and ants—and the scene of “wild sex nights” with prostitutes smuggled in by bribed guards.

The prison’s population has swollen due to the country’s crackdown on drugs. Built for 300, it’s equipped with shared squat toilets and has such a shortage of beds that many of its 1,400 inmates sleep on the floor. Some escape. Others commit suicide. Still others are murdered.^[8]

2 Gilboa Prison (2021)

Plates and panhandles, instead of picks and shovels, were the tools Gilboa Prison inmates used to dig their tunnel to freedom. The garage pails and hollow shafts in their wing of the prison were the dump sites for the excavated soil. Over 10 months, aided by five other inmates, the six escapees, “Palestinian security prisoners,” dug their way through their bathroom’s concrete and metal rebar flooring to remove a slab leading to a series of cavities in the prison’s structure. They fled through these holes before tunneling up to a road alongside the prison.

The escape was aided by incompetence: blocked sewer reports were ignored, security cameras went unwatched, and barking dogs triggered alarms that were dismissed.^[9]

1 Srisailam Left Bank Canal (2025)

The collapse of the roof of the Srisailiam Left Bank Canal project’s tunnel trapped eight people. Fortunately, 60 others escaped.

The collapse occurred when the tunnel boring machine was activated. Water began to flood the tunnel, probably as the result of seepage that had occurred prior to the roof’s collapse. Other workers might have been trapped as well had not a train arrived, transporting them to safety.

Reportedly, workers who survived the accident had been intimidated by the construction company into avoiding the disclosure of details of the incident.

Over a week later, the location of those trapped in the tunnel remained unknown. Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy said that the rescue would be expedited as soon as a damaged conveyor belt was repaired. The water seepage, he explained, was caused by the project’s lack of electricity, and, he said, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi, a state political party, had not paid bills to the contractor company.^[10]