During World War II, British veteran Christopher Clayton Hutton was given an unusual task by his government: Design secret objects that captured British POWs could use to escape. Hutton, who had studied both magicians and escape artists, devised a series of clever items.

Perhaps the best-known are his "escape scarves," which were silk scarves worn by airmen that had maps of enemy territory printed on them. Should they be shot down and survive, they could hopefully use the maps to work their way back towards friendly territory. You can actually find these on eBay.

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Hutton designed these buttons, just one of which would be sewn onto an airmen's jacket amidst the regular buttons. The special button had a compass hidden inside. The cap over it was reverse-threaded, so that even if a prison guard were to suspect something was inside and try unscrewing it, he'd only tighten it.

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Downed airmen were expected to try to evade capture by blending in with the local population, but one giveaway was their boots. Thus Hutton designed the boots to hold a knife. The boots were made with a special seam that the airman could slice along, and the tops of the boots would then detach while the bottom resembled ordinary citizen's shoes. There was also a secret compartment in the heel.

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Hutton also designed gear that was designed to be smuggled to POWs in the form of the care packages that the Geneva Convention permitted to be shipped. These razor blades were magnetized so that, if floated in water, one end always pointed north.

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These LP records were perfectly playable. But if you broke them open, inside were maps and/or foreign cash.

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Hutton's department was known as MI9, a/k/a the British Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 9. MI9 had him produce a catalog of these items in 1942 to share with the Americans. Incredibly a copy of this catalog, called "Per Ardua Libertas" ("Through Adversity, Freedom") was found in recent years and sold by the Bonhams auction house. Here are some images from the catalog which show more of Hutton's inventions:

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By the bye, French brand Bonhomme recently released a line of escape scarves, reportedly reprinted from the British Army's original designs.

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