The Great Escape - Remembering the Fifty

[Wurger]

 

[buffnut453]

Found this video clip of the replica glider being launched from the roof of Colditz castle:

 

[Gnomey]

Good stuff!

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Them were some homesick sonsabitches.

 

[Wayne Little]

most interesting info and Pictures, thanks for sharing this...

 

[SaparotRob]

I've seen the the Colditz glider before and thought it wouldn't work. I was pleasantly surprised.

 

[Wurger]

 

[fastmongrel]

With all the tunnels and holes at Colditz it wouldn't surprise me if one day there's a rumbling noise and it implodes

 

[Skua]

Thanks for all of the information and photographs. I for one did not appreciate just how big the camp was and the red line graphically illustrates just how short 'Harry' was.

Continuing the fight - I read several years ago of a French fighter pilot serving from 1940 alongside the RAF fighting to free the occupied countries. On June the 6th 1944 he had taken off in a Spitfire for a test, soon into the flight the control tower called and told him about the Normandy Invasion. They just received a drawn out cough as a reply; and the aircraft began to soar, climb and dive and to execute barrel roles.
Such men and women should always be remembered.

 

[buffnut453]

Thanks for all of the information and photographs. I for one did not appreciate just how big the camp was and the red line graphically illustrates just how short 'Harry' was.

Continuing the fight - I read several years ago of a French fighter pilot serving from 1940 alongside the RAF fighting to free the occupied countries. On June the 6th 1944 he had taken off in a Spitfire for a test, soon into the flight the control tower called and told him about the Normandy Invasion. They just received a drawn out cough as a reply; and the aircraft began to soar, climb and dive and to execute barrel roles.
Such men and women should always be remembered.

Yes, the entire Sagan camp complex expanded considerably during the war. The aerial reconnaissance image in the OP clearly shows that just the western half of Stalag Luft 3 had been completed. The German compound in the centre of the camp and the eastern POW compounds were still native forestry. That image also clearly shows the "cooler" and the camp hospital on either side of the line of Harry. The size of the huts is also impressive. There's a replica of Hut 104 near the Great Escape Museum which has additional displays in information. It's much larger than I'd expected.

 

[fredleander]

Fantastic thread! Tks for posting! As a flight dispatcher I had the pleasure to work with Jens Muller's son in a Norwegian airline after the war, he was named "Jens", too, and best known in those circles for once having returned to base with pine branches in the lower parts of his jet fighter! Many of the sons of Norwegian pilots flying for the RAF in England served as pilots in the Norwegian Air Force after the war, one of them being Martin Gran, named after his father, a squadron leader in the "Norwegian Wing", and grandson of Trygve Gran who was the first to fly across the North Sea in 1914.

Jens Muller wrote a book, too: "Tre kom tilbake" - "Three Returned".

Per Bergsland, the other Norwegian pilot who escaped (together with Muller), also continued to fly after the war, in the Fred Olsen airline.

Fred