'The only things we’ve got in common is that we both annoyed the Germans': Airman who inspired Steve McQueen's 'Cooler King' character in The Great Escape dies aged 93
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•Ken Rees inspired Steve McQueen's character in 1963 film The Great Escape
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•Flight Lieutenant Rees was a POW at the infamous Nazi prison Stalag Luft III
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•The Welshman was caught in the prisoner-dug tunnels by a German guard
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•Mr Rees: 'If I did get out, I wouldn't have been able to ride a motorbike'
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•He has now died at the age of 93, with his funeral to be held in north Wales
By COREY CHARLTON FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 17:09, 2 September 2014 | UPDATED: 20:24, 2 September 2014
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A British airman who was the inspiration for Steve McQueen’s character in the Great Escape has died at the age of 93.
Flight Lieutenant Ken Rees was a prisoner of war and like McQueen in the classic movie he spent most of his time in solitary confinement.
Proud Welshman Mr Rees was part of the legendary escape from Stalag Luft III camp and was named as the inspiration for the McQueen character in the 1963 film.
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Wing Commander Ken Rees, pictured in Anglesey, Wales, in 2003. He was the inspiration for Steve McQueen's character in the 1963 film The Great Escape, in which allied prisoners tunnel their way out of a Nazi POW camp
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Mr Rees as a young man at the start of WWII (right) and as an older man during his career with the RAF (left)
But modest Mr Rees said he had little in common with McQueen’s character - except for the amount of time they spent in 'the cooler'.
After the film came out he said: 'He is taller than I am, I’m heavier than he is, he’s American and I’m a Welshman.
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'The only things we’ve got in common is that we both annoyed the Germans and ended up doing stretches in the cooler.
'I didn’t get out and if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to ride a motorbike anyway.'
Steve McQueen played Captain Virgil Hilts, the 'Cooler King' in the movie in which he is captured after leaping a barbed wire fence on a motorbike.
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Steve McQueen poses on the motorbike he rode in the film at the Swiss-German border. In reality, none of the prisoners escaped on a bike
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The wreckage of Mr Rees' plane, pictured in 1969, after he was shot down over a lake in Norway as a young man in 1942
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If was from the crash in Norway that he was captured and taken to the infamous Nazi prisoner of war camp. The wreckage was found and pictured in 1969
In reality, none of the prisoners used a motorbike to escape.
Mr Rees was one of the men caught in the tunnel when the break-out was discovered by a German guard.
Of the 76 escapees from Stalag Luft III camp, only three managed to reach Britain - the other 73 were recaptured, and 50 were killed.
Only two of these escapees remain alive today - Dick Churchill, from Devon, and Paul Royle, who lives in Perth, Australia.
Watch Steve McQueen in his famous role in The Great Escape
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A tunnel dug underneath the Stalag Luft III prisoner of war camp, from which 76 people escaped
Mr Rees, of Ruabon, North Wales, joined the RAF at the age of 18 at the outbreak of Second World War and flew Wellington bombers in raids over Germany.
He became a prisoner of war after his aircraft was shot down in flames over Norway in 1942.
The young airman was captured and taken to Stalag Luft III where it was considered the sworn duty of officers to escape.
His memory as a prisoner of war was being 'bored to tears', constantly hungry and finding himself banged up in solitary confinement or the ‘cooler’ as it was known by American prisoners.
On the night of the breakout, Mr Rees was lucky to escape with his life as the last man to be pulled from the tunnel as German shots rang out in the darkness.
Mr Rees’s funeral will take place next Saturday at Bangor Crematorium in North Wales.
THE GREAT ESCAPE: FACT OR HOLLYWOOD FICTION?
The character Danny 'Tunnel King' Velinski, played by Charles Bronson, crawling through the tunnel in The Great Escape
The Great Escape's legendary motorbike chase scene starring Steven McQueen shows his character - based on Ken Rees - attempting to outrun Nazi prison guards on a motorbike.
In reality, this element to the story was completely fabricated. None of the prisoners tried to flee on a motorbike.
While 76 prisoners actually escaped, all except three were recaptured.
Of this 73, 50 were soon recaptured and executed. Although the film was accurate in this respect, the ones who successfully made it home in the film were not the same as those who did so in real life.
Although Mr Rees was Welsh, the movie producers made McQueen's character an American, presumably to give the film more appeal to U.S. audiences. Many other characters were composites, based on a number of real-life prisoners.
In fact none of the prisoners involved in the real prison escape were American - they were entirely British and other Allied troops, including Australian and Canadian.
American troops had been moved from the prison in the months before the escape tunnels were ready, although they had helped significantly with the digging.