Even in his Eton schooldays it seemed likely that Tony Rolt would become famous as an amateur motor racing driver. Aged 18, he came fourth in his class in the annual 24-hour sports car race at Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium, in 1936, and a year later won the British Empire Trophy at Donnington Park in a B-type ERA. Then the Second World War intervened.
The only son of a regular soldier, he never questioned whether the Army was his correct choice of career. In the Thirties - and still when possible today - dangerous sports were encouraged, so he went to Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade in 1939.
He was taken prisoner at the conclusion of the brave but hopeless defence of Calais by 30th Infantry Brigade, of which 1st Battalion The Rifle Brigade formed part, in May 1940. The small British force was landed there to secure the port, unaware that General Heinz Guderian's XIX Panzer Corps was sweeping up from the southeast. Rolt was awarded his first Military Cross for gallantry in command of his platoon in the fighting that followed.
The first stage of captivity involved a wearying trek to the railhead. He made his first escape attempt by diving into a ditch when the attention of the guards was distracted.
He and an RAF officer who had done the same, set out to find an aircraft to fly to England, but an encounter with a German patrol quashed that ambition. Rolt was sent to Stalag VB at Biberach, 60 miles from the Swiss frontier. In August 1941 he and a Sapper officer walked out of the camp disguised as German workmen. They were in sight of the border when they collided with a German border guard. Recapture was followed by 14 days in solitary confinement and transfer to Stalag XXC, an old Polish fort at Posen (Poznan).
An escape attempt from there ended with more solitary confinement then transfer to Oflag VIB at Warburg. This was a purpose-built camp on a high desolate plateau west of the Weser. In a well-planned escape, Rolt and four companions walked out dressed as members of a Swiss Red Cross Commission, whose real members had entered a couple of hours earlier.
The five men were free for 48 hours before, relying too much in their “official” appearance and because two of their number spoke fluent German, they were recaptured leaving a railway station in daylight. After a stretch at Stalag VIIB at Eichstätt in Bavaria, from where he also made an escape attempt, Rolt was sent to Colditz Castle, the Sonderlager for persistent escapers.
In Colditz he teamed up with two RAF officers, Flying Officer Bill Goldfinch and Flight Lieutenant Jack Best, and Lieutenant Geoffrey “Stooge” Wardle of the Royal Navy to build the glider that they planned to launch from Colditz Castle roof. By that stage of the war, spring 1944, it was apparent Germany would be defeated and it was feared that the SS might embark on wholesale slaughter of the Colditz prisoners as an act of reprisal. The glider was to provide the prisoners with a possibility of carrying news of any such atrocity to the outside world.
During his first winter in Colditz, Goldfinch had watched the snowflakes swirling upwards over the castle roof, conditions perfect for glider flight. From the same window, he had spotted a suitable landing ground - a meadow beyond the River Mulde 500 yards away. The Senior British Officer in Colditz, Lieutenant-Colonel “Willie” Tod, backed the project as he was concerned that the increasingly unruly behaviour of some of the prisoners and systematic baiting of the guards could lead to a more aggressive attitude being adopted by the prison staff. He reckoned that whether the glider flew or not, scavenging materials for construction, acquiring the tools and the routine positioning of lookout prisoners to give warning of sudden searches would keep a large number of men keenly motivated, occupied and out of trouble.
It was Rolt who devised the location for the glider workshop. Mud-plastered mattress covers stretched over wooden frames made a false wall at the end of an attic, the ideal space from where the glider could be lifted on to the roof for launching.
Goldfinch found a copy of C. H. Latimer-Needham's Aircraft Design in the prisoners' library, providing the principles for the blueprint of a glider of 33ft wingspan capable of lifting two men of average weight. (The four core team members had decided to toss for the two places only when the glider was ready). Work began in May 1944 with a completion date scheduled for the following spring.
Rolt's role in the enterprise was the organisation of the prisoners collecting the wide range of materials required to make the 6,000 individual parts for the glider from around the castle compounds, and the complex system of lookouts to warn the workers of any approach of the guards to the area of the attic workshop. Relief of the castle by the US Army in April 1945 meant the glider never flew, although a replica constructed 40 years later by Southdown Aero Services proved it would have done so.
Anthony Peter Roylance Rolt was the son of Brigadier-General S. P. Rolt and educated at Eton and RMC Sandhurst. The persistency of his wartime escape attempts was recognised by award of a Bar to his Military Cross in 1946. He had by then decided that the motor race track held more excitement for him than the Army in peace time, so resigned his commission to become one of the great gentlemen amateur drivers associated with Jaguar cars.
The Jaguar stable won the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1951 with their new C-type driven by Peter Walker and Peter Whitehead, while Rolt had achieved sixth place in a Nash-Healey. This led Jaguar to look on him as a potential recruit and, to his delight, he was offered the position of reserve driver for the Dundrod race in Ireland. When the works driver retired feeling ill halfway through, Rolt took over to break the lap record and raise the car's position from seventh to fourth, winning him a permanent place in the Jaguar team.
In 1953 Rolt and Duncan Hamilton in a C-type Jaguar faced competition from every leading European sports car manufacturer at Le Mans. They won the race with an average speed of more than 100 mph, Rolt having raised their game by five seconds per lap to beat the Jaguar of Stirling Moss and Peter Walker into second place, four laps behind. He and Hamilton were jointly awarded the Malcolm Campbell Memorial Trophy. The following year, when Jaguar introduced their D-type, Rolt and Duncan Hamilton finished second at Le Mans, only oil filter pit stops costing them first place to Ferrari.
Rolt retired from racing in 1955 to concentrate on his own motor manufacturing business, FF Developments. From modest beginnings converting ambulances and military vehicles to four-wheel drive, this company became a leading supplier of design, engineering and prototyping services of the motor industry. Rolt patented the viscous coupling differential, as co-inventor, and the company produced gearboxes for racing and rally cars, including some by McLaren.
In 1945, he married Lois Blomfield, step-daughter of Major Alexander Allan of the Rifle Brigade. She predeceased him, as did their younger daughter. He is survived by two sons and a daughter.
Major Anthony Rolt, MC and Bar, Colditz veteran and racing driver, was born on October 16, 1918. He died on February 6, 2008, aged 89
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Major Anthony Rolt RIP
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Originally Posted by Kyt
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