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World War II tunnel digger John Fancy whose actions inspired the film the Great Escape, has died. Just nine months after the beginning of hostilities in the WWII, the young and dashing RAF observer was shot down. His Blenheim bomber had just successfully hit its target in the Ardennes when he came under heavy fire from German anti-aircraft positions on 14 May 1940. Within moments the aircraft had ditched.

Eric “Digger” Dowling, who forged passports, made maps and helped to dig the one tunnel that the Germans did not discover before the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III, has died, aged 92. On March 24, 1944, 250 prisoners lined up to await their turn to crawl through the tunnel to freedom. Many of them were equipped with documents that had been forged by Mr Dowling, who learnt to speak five languages fluently during his three years in the prison.

RAF pilot who was awarded the Military Cross for his part in the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III “Jimmy” James was one of 76 officers who escaped from Stalag Luft III on the night of March 24, 1944, and was fortunate not to be among the 50 executed on Hitler’s order on recapture. He was sent instead to Sachsenhausen concentration camp from where he tunnelled his way out, only to be caught again after 14 days on the run. He was the second pilot of a Wellington bomber shot down south of Rotterdam in June 1940. Initially hopeful that...

'A World War II veteran who took part in the prison camp breakout immortalised in the film The Great Escape has died. Bertram "Jimmy" James, 92, of Ludlow, Shropshire, died on Friday at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. Sqn Ldr James was one of 76 men who escaped from a Nazi prison camp in 1944 in Poland, which was remembered in the 1963 film starring Steve McQueen. Military historian Howard Tuck said the ex-RAF Squadron Leader had been "the country's greatest living war hero".'

The cartoon depicting the Great Escape was drawn ten days after the breakout from Stalag Luft III Prison camp art that escaped guardsBy Jack Malvern PoW's scrapbook of the Great Ecape is to be auctioned A CARTOON of the prison break depicted in the film The Great Escape has emerged in a prisoner’s war diary. The cartoon — drawn ten days after the event and accompanied by a poem lamenting the shooting of 50 of the escapees — appears in a scrapbook that belonged to Clive Nutting, a prisoner who was involved in the two most celebrated escapes of...

BRANT Webb and Todd Russell last night paid an emotional tribute to the men who saved their lives in the Beaconsfield mine collapse. Speaking publicly for the first time since being freed from their tiny cage 1km below the surface, Mr Webb and Mr Russell thanked people from all over Australia involved in their "great escape". Mr Webb said: "For all our mates who . . . put their lives on the line for us and worked in dangerous unstable conditions to bring us out -- we owe our lives to them." The pair had the biggest cheer of the...

Forget Steve McQueen breaking out of the German prison camp astride that motorcycle in "The Great Escape." Never happened. "It was fabricated by Hollywood," says Davy Jones. He should know. Jones, 91, helped dig three tunnels intended as escape routes for Allied airmen held at Stalag Luft III, a remote, top-security camp built in German-occupied Poland. On the night of March 24-25, 1944, 76 prisoners - none American - escaped. Only three made it to freedom: a Dutchman and two Norwegians. Most of the escapees were recaptured. Fifty were shot "We felt despair," says Jones, who became one of the...

LONDON (Reuters) - Penguins and stooges, tunnelers and forgers -- they were all there in London this week to remember Tom, Dick and Harry. These were the men who broke out of Nazi Germany's supposedly escape-proof camp Stalag Luft III on a moonless night in March 1944, creating one of World War II's most enduring legends and inspiring a classic war film. The Great Escape itself was 60 years ago but Squadron Leader Jimmy James, one of the 76 who escaped through the tunnel code-named Harry, clearly remembers the moments as he waited underground to scramble to freedom. "I felt...