‘Great Escape’ pilot Paul Royle dies in Australia

Royle took part in a mass break out from a German camp during the second World War

Steve McQueen in The Great Escape (1963).
Steve McQueen in The Great Escape (1963).

Australian pilot Paul Royle, who took part in a mass break out from a German prisoner of war camp during the second World War, has died in his home town of Perth. He was 101-years-old.

The escape was the subject of the 1963 film The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen.

Gordon Royle said that his father died at a Perth hospital following surgery on a hip fracture that he suffered in a fall in a nursing home.

Australian Broadcasting Corp reports that Royle's death leaves only one survivor of the 76 men who escaped from the Stalag Luft III camp in Poland in 1944 - 94-year-old Briton Dick Churchill, a former squadron leader.

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