Dov Cohen, AKA "Shimshon", a former member of the British Special Interrogation Group, was selected to lead the operation.

The plan was facilitated by Peres Etkes, an American of Russian Jewish origins, who worked for the Mandatory authorities as an engineer and who had built the prison.

[1] The break-out was originally planned for April, but was eventually rescheduled for Sunday, May 4, 1947, at 4 p.m., the day the United Nations General Assembly convened to discuss the Palestine issue.

Ladders were removed from one of the vehicles, and the men made their way to the nearby Turkish bath, disguised as Royal Engineers telephone technicians and carrying TNT, ropes and other necessary incursion equipment.

Using the smuggled explosive charges, they blew up two iron gates that obstructed their way to the kerosene room, where the hole in the prison wall was.

The second group of escapees put up a barricade of flammable materials and set it alight to create a fire which blocked the escape route, preventing the guards from immediately reaching it.

Amidst this chaos, a third group stepped into the prison yard and tossed grenades at guards positioned on the roof, causing them to flee.

The driver, attempting to dodge the fire, drove the truck into a cactus clump, causing it to collapse on its left side.

Dov Cohen and two other Irgun fighters, Nissim Levy and Zalman Lifshitz, was waiting by their jeep at a nearby command post.

His uniform initially prevented the British from shooting at him, but in the end he, along with Levy and Lifshitz, were shot while providing covering fire for the escapees.

Only one of the escapees from the first truck, Nissim Benado, managed to evade capture; but he was seriously wounded and died later in a Haifa hideout.

[2] The remaining escapees and members of the strike force quickly boarded the second and third trucks, and Salomon began calling the blocking squads away.

As a result, the occupants had to push it while the driver tried to start the engine, and the truck was surrounded by an Arab mob, which began pelting it with objects.

When the driver managed to start up the engine again, the pushers quickly climbed aboard and a sound grenade was tossed into the Arabs blocking its path, causing the crowd to disperse.

The resulting noise and burst of smoke caused the driver to brake sharply, allowing the convoy to lose the pursuing truck.

[3] The New York Herald Tribune wrote that the underground had carried out "an ambitious mission, their most challenging so far, in perfect fashion", while in the House of Commons, Oliver Stanley asked what action His Majesty's Government was planning to take "in light of the events at Acre prison which had reduced British prestige to a nadir."

The five men from the blocking squads who had been captured, Avshalom Haviv, Meir Nakar, Yaakov Weiss, Amnon Michaelov, and Nahman Zitterbaum, were tried in a British military court.