From the archives of Bob Montgomery, motoring historian
THE FLYWHEEL: Motoring magazines are something of a phenomenon. Since the first appeared in the 1890s, successive generations of motoring enthusiasts have eagerly anticipated the arrival of their favourite weekly or monthly publications.
But of all the thousands of motoring magazines produced down the years none had a more strange existence than The Flywheel, produced by the inmates of Stalag IVB, a prisoner-of-war camp situated near Mulberg-on-Elbe, a small inland port in what was once East Germany some 80 miles south of Berlin.
The Flywheel owed its existence to the constant search for ways to raise the morale and spirits of the Allied prisoners in the camp. Stalag IVB was designed to accommodate 15,000 prisoners, but by 1944 when The Flywheel came into existence housed nearer 30,000 in filthy conditions in wooden huts. As a result all sorts of activities and organisations were created and one such was the 'Mulberg Motor Club'. Before long the membership had grown to 200 and one of the founding members, Tom Swallow, suggested that they should produce their own motoring magazine. Not even considering the difficulty of what they were proposing, Pat Harrington-Johnson, a journalist in South Africa before the war, was appointed editor. The club chairman Arthur Pill took on the demanding role of production manager but how would the magazine be produced? This, after all, was a prisoner of war camp where even food was often scarce.
It took time, but the first issue of The Flywheel was produced in May 1944. With nothing to write on or with, Arthur Pill performed miracles acquiring a pen-holder, a nib and some ink from the camp guards by bartering cigarettes. Quinine tablets were 'liberated' from the camp hospital for colour, and it was found that millet soup allowed to ferment over a few days made a pretty good adhesive. As millet soup was a major part of the prisoners' diet, this meant someone going short of rations .
Issue No 1 was a huge success, and here the circulation manager played a key role, for there was but one hand lettered and illustrated edition of each issue, so it was his task to bring it to each of the 200 readers and collect it later.
Between issues, each page of the next issue was painstakingly handwritten, but it was the illustrators who were the real heroes of the whole enterprise. Bill Stobbs and Dudley Mumford and others produced illustration after illustration of motoring and motorcycling entirely from memory! One of the most popular features in each issue was 'Road Tests Recalled' which went into quite amazing detail considering the feats of memory it involved.
Flywheel No 11 was in the throes of production in March 1945 when fighting reached Mulberg and the camp was overrun by Cossacks of the First Ukrainian Army, who simply replaced the German guards who had fled and kept the anxious inmates prisoner for a further six weeks!
When the only available food - potatoes - ran out, the prisoners were marched to Riesa where they were 'found' by the advancing American troops who organised transport to return them to their home countries.
Copies of The Flywheel miraculously survived all of this drama and in 1987 were the basis of a book titled Flywheel - Memories of the Open Road which reproduced many pages from the original publications, surely the most remarkable motor magazine ever produced.