MOTORSPORT’S WARTIME HEROES
Forget It’s a Wonderful Life or The Muppet Christmas Carol, the films most likely to get us parked on the sofa this festive season are the rousing Second World War classics. Think The Great Escape, Where Eagles Dare and The Dam Busters. We’re gripped because we know that their implausible plots are rooted in the exploits of real wartime heroes.
Many of these characters came from the world of motorsport. They exchanged setting speed records and winning grands prix for piloting bombers and decoding Nazi messages. Here are the stories of just some of the racing men and women whose incredible wartime feats deserve recognition.
MAJOR ANTHONY ROLT
If you’ve watched The Colditz Story starring John Mills, then you’ll be familiar with the maximum-security prisoner-of-war camp set up by the Germans to house those prisoners who were hell-bent on escape. One such real-life prisoner was BRDC British Empire Trophy winner Tony Rolt.
An officer in the Rifle Brigade, Rolt was part of a desperate attempt in 1940 to halt the advance of the 10th Panzer
