Scottsdale’s most retold story happened on the second-to-last night before Christmas. On December 23–24, 1944, twenty-five German prisoners of war — Kriegsmarine men, led by U-boat commander Jürgen Wattenberg — slipped out of Camp Papago Park through a 178-foot tunnel dug with coal shovels and hidden under a bathhouse. It was, and remains, the largest POW escape on U.S. soil.
The desert did most of the guarding. Several escapees planned to raft the Salt River to Mexico, having studied maps that showed a confident blue line — and found the riverbed bone-dry. Cold, hungry, and out-argued by the landscape, the fugitives were rounded up one by one, several after knocking on Valley ranch-house doors to ask for food. All twenty-five were back in custody within about a month; Wattenberg himself held out until late January, hiding in the hills before venturing into Phoenix and being recognized.
The escape is the year’s headline, but the backdrop matters too: 1944 was peak wartime Scottsdale, with Thunderbird Field II two years into its run and still cycling cadets through primary flight training over the town’s fields. Airfield and prison camp alike would close out their war within the year — and the men who had trained in the Valley would soon start coming back to stay. The night itself is told in full at December 23, 1944, and the manhunt’s last act at January 28, 1945.