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
Steve McQueen (The Automatic song) States Army Air Force Officer; Captain Virgil Hilts, who tries to escape from a Stalag. NME, Designer Magazine and a BBC radio interview with James Frost all sourced "Steve McQueen" for an April 2007 release, along with b-side "Revolution", both of which were recorded at Christmas 2006. This release was however dissolved for an unknown reason. Over a year passed from its original intended release in April 2007, when eventually a re-recording – with Paul Mullen replacing Alex Pennie premiered on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show on 7 July 2008; moments later a clip of the track was added