Great Train Robbers guarded by secret Army snipers after PM feared breakout plot
Patrols came after two of the crooks had previously escaped
ARMY snipers were secretly sent into three jails to guard the Great Train Robbers and foil a feared breakout plot.
Patrols began after warnings of a “raid by ruthless men” who would “stop at nothing”.
It came in 1965 after Charlie Wilson and Ronnie Biggs escaped, secret Home Office files obtained by The Sun reveal.
One jail chief warned of a military-style attempt at Durham which, with Parkhurst and Leicester, held members of the gang.
Then PM Harold Wilson agreed to send in the troops – without telling Parliament first – after his then Defence Secretary Denis Healey called for the SAS.
Security was lifted in 1966 when some of the crooks were moved into a new block at Parkhurst.
The gang stole £2.6million — £50million today — after holding up a mail train in August, 1963 at Sears Crossing, Bucks.
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Nine robbers were jailed immediately including Ronnie Biggs, Gordon Goody, Charlie Wilson, Roy James, Roger Cordrey, John Daly, Robert Welch, Thomas Wisbey, and James Hussey — along with a number of accomplices.
Biggs and Wilson were both sprung from prison by armed accomplices, leaving the other seven in Durham, Leicester, and Parkhurst.
Ring leaders Bruce Reynolds and Buster Edwards fled to Mexico but were both eventually jailed.
Another fugitive, Jimmy White, managed to lay low for years in the UK before being nabbed.
Three of those involved are believed never to have been caught.