The Real Col. Hogan and Stalag 13.

[Checkertail20]

There was a bomber pilot in the 450th Bombardment Group named Robert Hogan who was shot down in a mission over Yugoslavia and was sent to Stalag 13.

https://coloradosprings.beaconsenio...d-on-a-true-story-meet-the-real-colonel-hogan

 

[SaparotRob]

How about that.

 

[KLS&C 85]

There was a bomber pilot in the 450th Bombardment Group named Robert Hogan who was shot down in a mission over Yugoslavia and was sent to Stalag 13.

https://coloradosprings.beaconsenio...d-on-a-true-story-meet-the-real-colonel-hogan

Growing up I loved Hogan's Heroes on TV. In my high school marching band my senior year we played the theme music as part of a football half time show.

Reality has a way of trumping TV fiction, even Sci Fi at times. This is just one more example.

 

[MIflyer]

I have already told y'all the story a friend of mine, a Polish POW related to me. One of the Polish officers captured in his camp spoke very good German. The Germans asked him why and he replied that he had to learn the language so he could attend the Mercedes Benze factory mechanics' training course. The Germans assigned him to maintain the camp commandant's staff car, and he did so, faithfully. Until he succeeded in stealing a German officer's uniform and the camp tailors created a German enlisted man's uniform. And then one day he and one of the other POWs dressed in the uniforms and drove the commandant's Mercedes to Switzerland.

I'll bet that they did not let them keep the car.

 

[SaparotRob]

I have already told y'all the story a friend of mine, a Polish POW related to me. One of the Polish officers captured in his camp spoke very good German. The Germans asked him why and he replied that he had to learn the language so he could attend the Mercedes Benze factory mechanics' training course. The Germans assigned him to maintain the camp commandant's staff car, and he did so, faithfully. Until he succeeded in stealing a German officer's uniform and the camp tailors created a German enlisted man's uniform. And then one day he and one of the other POWs dressed in the uniforms and drove the commandant's Mercedes to Switzerland.

I'll bet that they did not let them keep the car.

WOW!

 

[MIflyer]

Several years back they were planning a sort of a sequel to HH. It was going to be about the sons and daughters of the Heros, at home after the war in the USA. But I guess it was kind of hard to develop stories with that thin of a plot line.

 

[MIflyer]

By the way, not only was Sgt Schultz a real WW1 German soldier who carried the very rifle he had brought with him when he emigrated to the USA in the early 20's, but Lebeau was held in a German concentration camp in WW2. Schultz, John Bruner, worked in intelligence in WW2, helping with translations and interpretations, and went deer hunting each year with the rifle he used on the TV show.

 

[Checkertail20]

Here is a recruiting poster of John Banner taken before he became famous on Hogan's Heroes.

 

[SaparotRob]

Here is a recruiting poster of John Banner taken before he became famous on Hogan's Heroes.

View attachment 858604

I had started to post that my dad told me John Banner posed for U.S.Army recruiting posters. I stopped as I remembered posting undocumented information here results in a taunting.

 

[DDonSS3]

I saw the video Robert Cleary had on (IIRC) Netflix. Very heartbreaking to listen to when he spoke of his Concentration camp experience. Again, IIRC, it was about an hour long interview.