Colditz Cock The Colditz Cock was a glider built by British prisoners of war for an escape attempt from Oflag IV - C ( Colditz Castle ) in Germany . Background . Following the execution of 50 prisoners who had taken part in the " Great Escape " from Stalag Luft III , the Allied High Command had discouraged escape attempts , though the plan to build a glider was encouraged in order to divert the energies of the prisoners from descending into boredom and tedium . The idea for the glider came from Lieutenant Tony Rolt . Rolt , who was not even an airman , had noticed the chapel roof line was completely obscured from German view . He realised that the roof would make a perfect launching point from which the glider could fly across the River Mulde , which was about 60 metres below . Construction . The team was headed by Bill Goldfinch and Jack Best . Goldfinch and Best were aided 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 and included a detailed diagram of a wing section . The glider was assembled by Goldfinch and Best and 12 assistants known as " apostles " , in the lower attic above the chapel . Future RAF Air commodore Geoffrey D . Stephenson assisted in the project . The runway was to be constructed from tables and the glider was to be launched using a pulley system based on a falling metal bathtub full of concrete , using a gravity - assisted acceleration to 30 mph ( 50 km / h ) . The officers who took part in the project built a false wall to hide the secret space in the attic where they slowly built the glider from stolen pieces of wood . Since the Germans were accustomed to looking down for tunnels , not up for secret workshops , the officers felt quite safe from detection . Nevertheless , they placed many lookouts and created an electric alarm system to warn the builders of approaching guards . Over thirty ribs had to be constructed ( around a third being structural compression ribs ) , predominantly formed from bed slats , but also from every other piece of wood the POWs could surreptitiously obtain . The wing spars were constructed from floor boards . Control wires were made from electrical wiring in unused portions of the castle . A glider expert , Lorne Welch , was asked to review the stress diagrams and calculations made by Goldfinch . The glider constructed was a lightweight , two - seater , high wing , monoplane design . It had a Mooney style rudder and square elevators . The wingspan , tip to tip , was 32 ft ( 9 . 75 m ) , and it was 19 ft 9 in ( 6 m ) from nose to tail . Prison sleeping bag s of blue and white checked cotton were used to skin the glider , and German ration millet was boiled and used as a form of dope to seal the cloth pore s . The completed glider weighed 240 lb ( 109 kg ) . The take - off was scheduled for the spring of 1945 during an air raid blackout but by then the Allied guns could be heard and the war ' s outcome was fairly certain . The British escape officer decided that the glider should be available for use in case the SS ordered the massacre of the prisoners as a way to get a message out to approaching American troops . The glider was approaching completion when the American Army liberated the camp on 16 April 1945 . Although the Colditz Cock never flew in real life , the concept was fictionalized , depicting a successful flight and escape , in the 1971 TV film " The Birdmen " starring Doug McClure , Chuck Connors , Rene Auberjonois and Richard Basehart . One episode of the BBC TV series " Colditz " depicts the decision to build a glider as an escape attempt . It is also depicted in the final escape from Colditz Castle in the fictional story depicted in Prisoner of War , a video game released in 2002 . The fate of the glider is not known but the castle was in the zone controlled by the Russians who did not co - operate with its reclamation . The only evidence of its completion was a photograph , said to have been taken by an American soldier . However , Goldfinch had kept his drawings which enabled a one - third scale model to be constructed . This was eventually launched from the castle roof in 1993 . Modern replica . A full - sized replica of the Colditz glider was commissioned by Channel 4 and was built by Southdown Aviation Ltd at Lasham Airfield . The glider was flown successfully by John Lee on its first attempt at RAF Odiham with Best , Goldfinch and about a dozen of the veterans who had worked on the original more than 55 years earlier proudly looking on . Jack Best died later that year . The replica is now housed at the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum at Flixton , Suffolk . The programme was shown in 2000 by Channel 4 in the UK as part of a 3 - part documentary series called " Escape from Colditz " . The Channel 4 material was edited to 60 minutes and shown in the US in 2001 as " Nazi Prison Escape " on the NOVA television series . In March 2012 , a radio controlled full - sized replica glider was built by UK based glider maintenance / repair company South East Aircraft Services in the Chapel attic and was flown from Colditz for a Channel 4 documentary . A flyable expanded polystyrene model of the glider was produced by the model kit manufacturer Airfix in its " Skycraft " range in the 1970s .