On This Day: Eleven miners rescued after 14 days trapped underground in West Germany

NOVEMBER 7, 1963: Eleven West German miners were dramatically rescued after being trapped almost 200ft below ground for a fortnight on this day 50 years ago.

One by one, the men were winched to surface in a capsule designed by pioneering engineers who successfully bored through rock and iron ore to reach their cavern.

TV crews from around the world filmed the literally groundbreaking rescue, which became known as the Wunder von Lengede, or Miracle of Lengede.

A British Pathé newsreel showed rescuer Joachim Habich jumping in the capsule and being lowered to liberate the first of the men who were entombed by a huge flood.

While watching above ground held their breath, the pod then returned with Habich shepherding miner Heinz Kull, 51, out from the abyss for the first time in 14 days.

He was able to walk to safety, but the next man to be rescued, Fritz Baer, needed to be taken away by stretcher.

Bernhard Wolter, Dieter Richey, Adolf Herbst, Helmut Webranitz, Johannes Sitter, Siegfried Ebeling, Rudolf Wies, Hermann Lübke and Helmut Kendzia followed them.

Their rescue came only three days after rescuers were able to confirm these 11 men had indeed survived the flood.

A total of 29 men drowned when 110,000 gallons of mud and water seeped into the iron ore mine near Saltzgitter after a sedimentation reserve burst on October 24, 1963.

Another 79 miners were able to escape within hours a further 21 survived but were trapped.

Of those, seven were rescued within a day by boring a small hole through a shaft near to the surface after draining some of the water.

Three more were rescued on October 28 using a bubble technique that blew air into the mine and displaced some of the liquid.

But it was unknown what had happened to the other 11 men who were still not accounted for.

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A memorial service was due to be held for them on November 4 amid fears they had been killed.

It was only on November 3 that rescuers confirmed they were in fact alive after miners suggested they may have hid in a disused shaft workers were barred from.

But this Alter Mann – or Old Man – shaft was 190ft below the surface and could not be reached through conventional means without their cavern being flooded.

So engineers came up with a method of drilling a 20in wide hole from another angle – straight though rock - and using a rescue pod on a winch to relay supplied to them.

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Eventually it was used to bring the men to the surface.

The same technique was used in Chile’s Copiapo mining accident in 2010 when when 30 gold and copper miners were saved after spending a record 69 days underground.

Only two days after the Lengede rescue, though, the world's attention turned to Japan where 458 coal miners died in an explosion.