Aircraft design

A glider was designed and built at Colditz, the infamous castle in Germany used as a Prisoner of War Camp during World War 2. The idea came from Bill Goldfinch and Anthony Rolt. Together with Jack Best and Stooge Wardle, they set about designing and building the glider. Using hundreds of pieces of wood - especially bed slats and floor boards - the men constructed the glider which they hoped would glide the 60 metres required to take two men to the other side of the Mulde. The skin of the glider was made from prison sleeping bags and the material's pores were sealed by boiling prison issue millet and smearing it onto the material. However, their daring idea was never put to the test as the war ended before the glider had been completed.

Goldfinch and Best were aided in designing the glider by their discovery in the prison library of "Aircraft Design", a two-volume work by C.H. Latimer-Needham which explained the necessary physics and engineering. The books included a detailed diagram of a wing section.