0 - Americans liberated during the real Great Escape.
0 - references to baseball in James Clavell’s original script (Steve McQueen insisted the ball and mitt be added to enhance the character of Virgil Hilts, much to the amusement of co-star James Coburn who thought McQueen the least athletic man he’d ever met).
1 - real-life Great Escapees who worked on the picture (Wally Floody was employed as a technical assistant).
2 - years Great Escape author Paul Brickhill spent in POW camps.
4 - members of the cast who had the misfortune to have been prisoners of war (Donald Pleasence was held by the Germans, Hannes Messemer by the Russians and Till Kiwe and Hans Reiser by the Americans).
7 - height in feet of the barbed-wire fence that Steven McQueen’s stuntman Bud Ekins cleared on his motorcycle.
50 - Escapees recaptured and executed by the Gestapo (John Sturges’ film is dedicated “to the 50”).
76 - Allied POWs freed during the real Great Escape. Only three made it to safety. In the case of the film, they are ‘Tunnel Kings’ Danny Welinski and Willie Dickes (Charles Bronson and John Leyton) and Coburn’s supposedly Australian ‘Manufacturer’ Sedgwick.