Clark Special Collections

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Donlad Emerson Phillips was a Second Lieutenant and Navigator on a B-17F for the 306th Bomb Group when his plane was shot down over occupied France on September 6th, 1943. He was captured and imprisoned in the Stalag Luft III prison camp in Sagan, Germany (now Zagan, Poland) for seventeen months. In January 1945 Phillips and his fellow prisoners were marched 60 miles in sub-zero temperatures to Spremberg, where they were loaded onto a boxcar and shipped to Stalag VII-A in Moosburg, Germany. They were liberated on April 28, 1945 by the American Seventh Army.

These materials were donated to the United States Air Force Academy by Theresa M. Ripley in 2005. Clark Special Collections maintains nearly 200 collections related to Stalag Luft III, and dozens of others pertaining to the World War II prisoner of war experience. See Clark Special Collections staff for additional resources. 

This collection consists of five folders pertaining to the military service and imprisonment of Donald E. Phillips. It includes letters written from his prison camps, service records, photographs, a type-written narrative, and a printed e-book written by Phillips titled Don’s Great Escape: Life in a German POW Camp