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) tunnels. In 2014, the 70th anniversary of the escape, the RAF staged a commemoration of the escape attempt, with 50 serving personnel carrying a photograph of one of the men shot. In 2019, the RAF are planning another event for the 75th anniversary of the escape. There will be a screening of the film The Great Escape at London's Eventim Apollo Hammersmith hosted by Dan Snow. The film has resulted in the story and the memory of the fifty executed airmen remaining widely known, if in a distorted form. A fictional, made-for-television sequel, "", was released in 1988, with different