It was an amazing feat of derring-do and would have been the ultimate break-out from the maximum security Colditz prison in the second world war.

The construction of the Colditz Cock, a glider with a 32-ft wingspan in which prisoners of war dreamed of drifting out of their jail and off to freedom, defied belief.

More than 50 years ago, PoWs built a secret workshop in the attic of the 11th-century Saxony castle used by the Nazis to imprison what they considered to be the "bad boys" of the allied prisoners.

Every day for eight months, a team of builders worked quietly on the plane for short spells in order not to be caught by their guards.

The Boys Own bravado saw the daring plans for the plane being drafted on a small sheet of paper and led to its construction from the most unlikely of materials.

The prisoners pulled up floorboards, slipped out bed slats and made control wires from electrical wire found in unused areas of the prison. Tools to build the Cock were fashioned from the handles of bed boards, the frames and iron bars from windows, blades were made from gramophone springs and needles were used to drill holes.

The skin of the aircraft was sewn together from the officers' sleeping bags. And a concrete-filled bathtub plunging five storeys and then crashing into the floor was to have provided a catapult needed for the launch.

The plane was completed but the escape officer decided lift-off should be delayed in case the SS ordered the massacre of the remaining prisoners in the castle. The glider's existence was only revealed after the allied victory in 1945 when the camp was peacefully turned over by its kommandant. While they embraced their freedom, the prisoners wished that they had been able to see their dream glider in flight.

Yesterday, that flying dream was thwarted again. Plans to fly a copy of the Colditz Cock were confounded, not by Nazis or cautious escape officers, but by the boring old weather.

The tools and the materials used to build the replica glider were not the same, but builders followed the original plans drawn up by a navy lieutenant, Tony Rolt.

Yesterday's flight, to have been watched by the plane's designer and some of its builders, was postponed because of winds of up to 30 knots. The veterans had gathered at RAF Odiham in Hampshire to see if their brainchild could ever have flown, as part of the Channel 4 series Escape from Colditz.

One of those present was Bill Goldfinch whose idea it was to try to fly out of Colditz. Mr Goldfinch, who now lives in Salisbury, Wiltshire, and was imprisoned for two and a half years, said: "It is a huge disappointment not to see the plane airborne after all these years, but we have been promised we will get another chance.

"Although it is a magnificent effort by those who built this plane, what cannot be recreated are the conditions in which we built the original and the need we had to finish it. My one regret is that the original never flew. If we had been in Colditz a bit longer then maybe she would've got up."

The new glider was built by Southdown Aero Services based in nearby Lasham, after being commissioned by the makers of the three part documentary which begins tonight. Neil Fripp, who helped build the new plane, said: "It is very frustrating but the high wind will just not let us do it. It could flip over on take-off and we do not want to take the risk."

Flight Lieutenant Jack Best, 87, who helped build the original glider, said: "I was perfectly certain that it would fly, and the meticulous job they have done in reconstructing it from the original plans is very impressive. Obviously they had tools that we could only dream about at the time, and the standard of materials is far higher because we had to use what was available."

Officer Skelley Ginn said: "We smuggled all kinds of bits and pieces to and from the workshop. We used metal hinges and replaced them with bits of webbing. We used lots of people to do different things so we wouldn't get caught."

Between 1941 and 1945, 1,500 allied prisoners were held in 700 rooms at Colditz, 176 attempted to escape and 31 succeeded. Colditz castle has been immortalised as a sinister, impenetrable fortress where the "bad boys" of the British officer class plotted their escapes and carried out their extraordinary feats.