Nov 2012 Speaker Dr Hugh Hunt - Dept Engineering Cambridge University

Dr Hugh Hunt will introduce this exclusive FREE screening of the fascinating Channel 4 TV documentary - Come along at 6pm to the Lecture Theatre O, Engineering Dept, Trumpington Str, Cambridge CB2 1PZ.

http://nearyou.imeche.org/near-you/UK/Eastern/Beds---Cambs-Area/event-detail/0/7249

Prisoners at Colditz used their time inventing ways to escape the imposing fortress. This is about their most audacious plan - the story of how far they got and an exploration of whether it would have worked.

The Director, Producer, Cast and Crew will be present to answer questions and talk about the challenges involved in the project.

Colditz Castle, one of the most notorious prisoner of war camps in Nazi Germany, was supposed to be escape-proof. But in the dark days at the end of World War II, a group of British officers got together.

In a secret workshop in an attic in the castle they planned to construct a sophisticated two-man glider out of bed sheets and floorboards. They were going to fly to freedom from the roof of the castle, but the war ended before they could put their plan into action, so no one knows if it would have worked.

In this Channel 4 documentary the Brits return to Colditz to finish the job. Cambridge engineer Dr Hugh Hunt leads a crack team of aeronautics engineers and carpenters to rebuild the glider in the same attic, using the same materials.

Then he attempts to do something the prisoners never got a chance to try: use a bathtub full of concrete to catapult the glider off the roof of the castle.

It's also a personal journey for Dr Hunt: his uncle, Major Will Anderson, was a prisoner in Colditz, as well as their arch-forger.

Hugh goes behind the legend, and finds out what it was really like for the men imprisoned here, and the families waiting for them back home. Along the way, archaeologists open up some of the castle's other famous escape routes.

Then, after a 70-year wait, the team finally find out if the legendary glider escape would have worked.