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Gunther Plüschow (born in Munich on February 8, 1886) was an aviator, aerial explorer, and author. His feats include (1) the only escape by a German POW in the Great War from Britain back to Germany, and (2) the first man to explore and film Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia from the air. As an aviator and explorer, Plüschow is honored as a hero by the Argentine Air Force to the present day.

When the First World War began in August 1914, Lieutenant Gunther Plüschow was assigned to the East Asian Naval Station at Tsingtau, which at the time was part of the German Kiautschou Bay concession in China. Two Taube airplanes had been shipped in crates from Imperial Germany. After supervising their assembly, Plüschow began serving as a pilot and aerial observer. The second plane, flown by Lt. Friedrich Müllerskowski, soon crashed, leaving Plüschow to fly alone.

The Japanese sent an ultimatum on August 15, 1914 demanding the German evacuation of Kiautschou Bay. It was understandably ignored, and eight days later, Japan declared war on Imperial Germany. A tandem of Japanese and British forces besieged the German colony… and by November 1914, the military situation at Kiautschou Bay had become untenable.

On November 6th, Plüschow (who had flown reconnaissance and downed a Japanese aircraft with his pistol) was ordered to fly out in his Taube, carrying with him the last dispatches and documents from the governor. After flying almost 160 miles in his much-repaired airplane, Plüschow crashed into a rice paddy. He set fire to the Taube, then started for Germany on foot.

ESCAPE FROM CHINA

Plüschow walked to Daschou, where the local mandarin threw a party for him. He managed to obtain a pass to cross China. In addition, Plüschow was given a junk, sailing it downriver and arriving safely in Nanking.

The lieutenant sensed that he was being watched, even by officials openly friendly to Germany! As he was about to be arrested, Plüschow leapt into a rickshaw and went to the railway station. There he bribed a guard and slipped on a train to Shanghai.

When he arrived, Plüschow met a friend who provided him with documents as a Swiss national, along with money and a ticket on a ship sailing to Nagasaki, then Honolulu, and finally to San Francisco. In January 1915, Plüschow crossed the United States on his way to New York City. He was reluctant to approach the German consulate there, because he had entered the country under a false identity. Worse, Plüschow read in a newspaper that he was presumed to be in New York.

But luck saved him again! Plüschow met a friend from Berlin who managed to get him travel documents for a ship sailing for neutral Italy on January 30, 1915. After crossing the Atlantic, Plüschow’s ship docked at Gibraltar, where the British arrested him as an enemy alien. They soon discovered that he was the famous aviator of Tsingtau.

ESCAPE FROM LONDON

On May 1, 1915, Plüschow was sent to a prisoner of war camp in Donington Hall, Leicestershire. Just over two months later (July 4th), he escaped during a storm and headed for London. Scotland Yard issued an alert, asking the public to be on the lookout for a man with a “dragon tattoo” on his arm.

Disguised as a worker, Plüschow felt safe enough to take souvenir photographs of himself at the London docks. He occupied his time by reading books about Patagonia and visiting the British Museum.

For security reasons, no notices were published announcing the departure of ships. However, by observing the River Thames, Plüschow saw the ferry Princess Juliana, which was headed for neutral Holland. He managed to sneak on board, reach the Netherlands, and finally arrive home safely in Germany!

At first, Plüschow was arrested as a spy, because no one believed he could have accomplished such an amazing feat. He is the only German combatant during either World War to escape from a prison camp based in the British Isles.

THE HERO’S RETURN

Once he was identified, Plüschow was acclaimed as “the hero from Tsingtau”. He was decorated, promoted, and assigned command of the naval base at Libau in occupied Latvian Courland.

In June 1916, Plüschow got married in an airplane hangar at Libau. He also wrote his first book entitled The Adventures of the Aviator from Tsingtau, which sold more than 700,000 copies. In 1918, his son, Guntolf Plüschow, was born.

The last months of the Great War witnessed profound crisis in Germany. In early November (with the nation dissolving into chaos), Kaiser Wilhelm II was forced to abdicate and flee to the Netherlands. Nearly eight months later, the Treaty of Versailles was impressed upon Germany by the victorious Allies.

Many Germans were unhappy with the outcome; some of them held several military and civil revolts. But Kapitänleutnant (lieutenant commander) Gunther Plüschow refused to participate. At only thirty-three years of age, he reluctantly resigned from the Reichsmarine.

SOUTH AMERICAN EXPLORATIONS

After leaving the navy, Plüschow worked at various jobs before he was hired on the sailing vessel Parma bound for South America. The ship took him around Cape Horn to Valdivia, Chile… and Plüschow then traveled the overland route across Chile to Patagonia. On his return to Germany, Plüschow published Segelfahrt ins Wunderland (“Voyage to Wonderland”). The royalties he earned encouraged further explorations.

On November 27, 1927, Plüschow took the wooden two-masted cutter Feuerland to Punta Arenas, Chile. His engineer, Ernst Dreblow, brought a Heinkel HD 24 D-1313 seaplane aboard a steamer. By December 1928, the plane had been fully assembled… and the inaugural flight brought the first air mail from Puntas Arenas to Ushuaia, Argentina. In the following months, Plüschow and Dreblow were the first men to explore the Cordillera Darwin, Cape Horn, the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, and the Torres del Paine of Patagonia by air.

But soon after accomplishing those feats, Plüschow had to sell the Feuerland to obtain funds to return to Germany. Once home, he published his explorations and photographs in a book, Silberkondor über Feuerland (“Silver Condor over Tierra del Fuego”), along with a documentary film of the same name. The ship Feuerland was brought to Weddell Island and sailed between the islands of the Falkland archipelago. In 2006, the Feuerland was transported back to Germany and listed as a historic cultural monument.

In 1930, Plüschow returned to Patagonia to continue his explorations. There, both he and Dreblow were killed in a crash near the Brazo Rico (part of Lake Argentino) on January 28, 1931. Gunther Plüschow died less than two weeks short of his forty-fifth birthday.

The Gunther Plüschow Glacier in Tierra del Fuego is named in his memory.

AWARDS

– Ottoman Medal of Arts and Science

– Liyakat Medal (Ottoman Empire)

– Iron Cross, First and Second Classes (1914)

– Knight’s Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords

– Knight’s Cross Second Class of the Order of the Zähringer Lion, with Oak Leaves and Swords (Baden)

– Military Merit Order with Swords, Fourth Class (Bavaria)

– Military Merit Cross, First and Second Classes (Mecklenburg-Schwerin)