Bill Ash escaping activities. He ended the war as a flight lieutenant. In August 2015, the BBC reported: "When Ash died aged 96 last year his obituaries noted that he was said to have been the model for Virgil Hilts, the lean, leather-jacketed airman played by Steve McQueen in the 1963 film "The Great Escape"". The character Hilts, nicknamed "The Cooler King" because of the time he spends in the prison camp's punishment block (which the prisoners call the "cooler") for his persistent escape attempts, steals a motorbike and tries to escape to Switzerland but is caught while using it to jump
The Great Escape (film) film is accurate in showing that only three escapees made home runs, although the people who made them differed from those in the film. The escape of Danny and Willie in the film is based on two Norwegians who escaped by boat to Sweden, Per Bergsland and Jens Müller. The successful escape of James Coburn's Australian character Sedgwick (the manufacturer) via Spain was based on Dutchman Bram van der Stok. Coburn, an American, was cast in the role of Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Flying Officer Louis Sedgwick who was an amalgamation of Flt Lt Albert Hake, an Australian serving