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) features often in the film. Many scenes involving the railway were filmed near Deisenhofen station and on the Großhesselohe - Holzkirchen line. The castle Hendley and Blythe fly by while attempting to escape is Neuschwanstein Castle. The film depicts the tunnel codenamed "Tom" as having its entrance under a stove and "Harry's" as in a drain sump in a washroom. In reality, "Dick's" entrance was the drain sump, "Harry's" was under the stove, and "Tom's" was in a darkened corner next to a stove chimney. The motorcycle chase scenes with the barbed wire fences were shot on meadows outside Füssen,