THE REAL Great Escape hero, one of the men who inspired the classic Steve McQueen movie, has died aged 92.
Squadron Leader Eric ‘Digger’ Dowling was one of the real World War II PoWs who dug the tunnels nicknamed ’Tom, Dick and Harry’ out of a Nazi Stalag in 1944.
He also helped forge documents and prepare maps for the mass escape in a key role which resembled that played by ’Tunnel King’ Charles Bronson in the 1963 film.
Eric was one of 250 prisoners who planned to get out from Stalag Luft III but he failed to make it because the 77th escapee was spotted by guards.
The Gestapo recaptured 50 of the men.
Bikers all around the world know the story partly because of the classic escape moment where Steve McQueen’s character tried to leap the border fence into Switzerland on a motorbike.
The Christmas movie favourite wasn’t a favourite of Dowling’s though – he said the film was "rubbish".
Speaking to The Sun, his son Peter, 60, said: “He didn’t think much of the Steve McQueen film. It left out a lot of the reality of digging the tunnels.
“He wasn’t one of America’s greatest fans and said it wasn’t like it was in the film at all and that the scene with the motorbike was rubbish.”
After he was liberated at the end of the war he worked as an air crash investigator for the RAF in Norway where he met and married wife Marie before returning to England in 1946.
He had two children and worked for British Aerospace on Concorde before retiring.
His wife died just after they celebrated their golden wedding and Eric died in his sleep in a nursing home near Stoke Bishop, Bristol.
