His son Roger confirmed the death by email.
Paul Royle, the second-to-last surviving prisoner to escape from Stalag Luft III in 1944, died in 2015 at 101. Many British news media outlets and other sources called Churchill the last surviving airman who took part in the escape.
The Germans captured Churchill, a squadron leader at the time, after they shot down the bomber he was flying over the Netherlands in 1940. In 1942 he was transferred to Stalag III, a camp in what is now Zagan, Poland, a little more than 100 miles southeast of Berlin and then a part of Germany, where a few hundred prisoners soon began excavating escape tunnels.
Churchill later recalled that the inmates felt they had to do something, even though it probably would have been safer to try to wait out the war.
“Were you going to sit and enjoy the very few delights of a barbed-wire prison camp until you were rescued by your comrades, if you were rescued, or were you going to try and get out of the place and rejoin, and drop something on them?” Churchill asked in a BBC interview in 2018.
Churchill helped dig the three main tunnels, which the prisoners called Tom, Dick and Harry. It was arduous, nerve-wracking work, conducted with improvised tools and the constant risk of discovery or a cave-in.
“You didn’t have any air,” Churchill said, “and you had a little fat lump lamp which was Reich margarine, which spluttered, with a bit of pajama cord or something similar, which sucked up the oil and gave you a little bit of a light. And you hacked away at your sand, pushed it behind you where another fool took it further back.”
The tunnels were cleverly concealed, but Tom was discovered by the Germans in 1943 and Dick proved unusable. On a frigid night in March 1944, Churchill was one of 76 prisoners to make their way through the tunnel called Harry and out of Stalag III.
The escape was delayed for more than an hour, and the tunnel ended yards away from the forest the escapees hoped would conceal them, so they had to scramble over open ground for cover. Churchill, who had spent months studying Romanian and dressed in improvised clothing he hoped would allow him to pass for a Romanian woodcutter, fled with Flight Lt. Bob Nelson and spent two days hiding in the woods as the Germans began a thorough search of the area. He and Nelson hid in a hayloft, where they were discovered on the third morning.
Paul Brickhill, an Australian POW who took part in the jailbreak, wrote a book about it called “The Great Escape” (1950). That book was the basis for the film, which starred Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Richard Attenborough and James Garner and added embellishments, most memorably when McQueen’s character vaulted a barbed-wire fence on a motorcycle.
Most of the escapees were recaptured in days — only three made it to freedom — and 50 were killed for the attempt. Churchill said he thought he was spared because his captors believed he might be related to Prime Minister Winston Churchill and could be a useful bargaining chip. (After he made it back to England he said that they were not related as far as he knew).
Churchill told The Telegraph in 2014 that he thought the escape “a worthwhile venture” despite its terrible cost.
“If nothing else, you are doing something towards the target of getting out and getting back to what you were doing before, whether it’s flying fighters or dropping bombs” instead of giving in to despair, he said.
Richard Sydney Albion Churchill was born Jan 21, 1920, in East Molesey, Surrey, England, to Sidney and Elsie (Taylor) Churchill. His father was a civil servant. He graduated from the Tiffin School in Kingston-Upon-Thames and in 1938 joined the Royal Air Force, where he trained as a pilot.
On Sept. 2, 1940, Nazi fighters shot down Churchill’s bomber during a nighttime raid on Ludwigshafen, Germany. The explosion damaged one of his eardrums before he could bail out, and his hearing in that ear never recovered.
Churchill finally left Stalag Luft III for good in January 1945, when the Nazis evacuated the camp before the Soviet army could reach it. The prisoners were forced to march west through deep snow and punishing cold, and were finally liberated by British forces that spring.
After the war Churchill worked with the RAF for a time, but his damaged eardrum kept him from flying again. His son said he worked mainly in export sales and marketing.
In 1950 he married Patricia Lane, who died in 2013. In addition to his son Roger he is survived by another son, David, and five grandchildren.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.