An aircraft in the attic: Amazing story of the Colditz glider

It may be a little in poor taste, but my wife and I have been comparing lockdown to being in a prisoner-ofwar camp, and joking about digging a tunnel to make our escape.

Explaining this to my dad in a Facetime call, he told me that some Pows had some even more ingenious ways of escaping – by plane, in fact.

He swears that is true, but I’m not so sure.

Can you elucidate, Queries Man? – A.

I can, and I can tell you that British prisoners in Colditz actually built a glider to try to flee to freedom.

Camp Oflag IV-C was situated in the 1,000-year-old Colditz Castle in Saxony and housed high-profile Allied prisoners, many of whom had made many escape attempts.

Its thick walls and the cliffside with a drop of 250ft (75m) down to the River Mulde made the castle practically impenetrable.

In 1945, with Allied forces closing in on Germany and prisoners worried their guards would murder them before they could be freed, Lt Tony Rolt – who was not even an airman – had noticed the roof line of the castle’s chapel was completely obscured from German view.

As an engineer, Rolt realised that a glider could be launched from the roof and could fly across the River Mulde, which was about 60 metres below.

The prisoners set about constructing the glider from bed slats, cotton sheets, electric cable, table knives, nails, wooden boxes, and they bribed a guard to supply some glue.

The finished glider, known as the Colditz Cock, was 20ft (6m) long, weighed 240lb (109kg) and had a wingspan of 32ft (10m).

Luckily, on April 16, 1945, Colditz was liberated before the prisoners had to use their incredible flying machine.

A recent Channel 4 documentary commissioned a replica – which flew on its first attempt.

A replica of the Colditz Cock glider makes a successful flight, above, and Anton Diffring and John Mills in The Colditz Story, 1953, main

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