It was fifty-years ago tonight, June 11, 1962, when convicted bank robbers Frank Lee Morris, Clarence Anglin and John Anglin disappeared from Alcatraz. They were never found.

It took them a year to create the escape route, disguise it and create the necessary tools. Soap and toilet-paper turned into decoys, air ducts became doorways, and rubber raincoats and plastic bags made a raft. On the night of the escape a ventilation shaft behind air ducts to their cells gave them a route to the roof. From there they climbed down a chimney on the outside of the building and then paddled their raft towards Marin. Mythbusters recreated the scene and tested the raft’s seaworthiness.

Morris is credited with devising the plan during his first year at the deteriorating facility. He had been sent to Alcatraz in 1960 on a sentence that would have ended in 1974. Instead, he escaped and it was closed by 1963.

The LA Times has posted an amusing story on the current GSA auction for a giant invisible catamaran.

…the U.S. Navy, which — after five years of trying and failing to donate the stealthy Sea Shadow to a museum — is now selling the ship for scrap metal in an online auction. All bids must be in at 3 p.m. Pacific time Friday. But there’s a catch. To win the auction, the successful bidder must agree to dismantle and scrap the Sea Shadow within six months…

What if you are a museum? Suddenly it is not good enough to be a museum?

Obviously the ship’s stealth is limited, otherwise the government would not be able to know what you did with it after winning the auction, right?

This is my favorite part of the story.

“On a typical night of testing, the Navy sub-hunter planes made 57 passes at us and detected the ship only twice,” he wrote. “A typical warship was a very high reflector of radar — a radar profile equal to about fifty barns. Our frigate would show up a hell of a lot smaller than a dinghy.”

That’s good news. The test success suggests that stealth technology in use today has come a long way from $200 million invested in 1985. Perhaps stealthy floating sea barns would now appear to be oar-sized? What’s a unit smaller than a dinghy? Life preserver?

More to the point, who in the world uses barns as a measure of size, especially when looking for something floating on the water? Perhaps it comes from people who think differently than the average person; people who use very precise and technical language to present their view of the world. People like this:

“I am amazed that it’s up for auction and a museum didn’t take it,” said Sherm Mullin, retired head of Lockheed’s Skunk Works. “But when I stop to think about it for about 10 microseconds, it becomes apparent to me that ships are difficult to take care of — a lot more difficult than airplanes.”

10 what? I would not even qualify 10 microseconds as a stop. That’s more like a yield in my mind. A speed bump at best.

Personally I would consider making bids for it but sadly it only comes with one microwave oven. I’d want at least a camp stove if I’m going to spend over $100K on a yacht. Although, I bet that microwave can cook food faster than anything on the market. Tuna in 10 microseconds anyone?