Born on Feb. 5, 1921 Mr. Mahon attended the Page Military Academy in Los Angeles and then graduated from Laguna Blanca Boys School in Santa Barbara, California. Jackson Barrett Mahon an American fighter pilot shot down over France in World War II who was one of several allied airmen thought to have inspired the 1963 movie "The Great Escape". Mr. Mahon lived in Henderson Nevada. In 1941, when the war was raging in Europe but the United States had not yet been drawn in, Mr. Mahon, who was from Bakersfield, Calif. enlisted in Britain's Royal Air Force and began flying Spitfires on combat missions with Eagle Squadron 121, a unit composed of American pilots.After completing 98 missions and shooting down nine enemy aircraft, Flight Lieutenant Mahon was reported missing in 1942 after a raid over northern France where he became a POW and ended up as a German prisoner at Stalag Luft III in Polish Silesia. Over the next two years, he and other P.O.W.'s stealthily dug tunnels under the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the camp. But Mr. Mahon could not wait for the tunnel to be finished. He seized a chance to break out alone and made it to the Czech border, where he was captured. He escaped again, only to be recaptured and placed in solitary confinement. Mr. Mahon was finally liberated by the Third Army under Gen. George S. Patton Jr. in 1945. After the war, Mr. Mahon became the personal pilot and later business manager for the actor Errol Flynn.Later, he and Peter Butterworth, a former fellow P.O.W. set up the International Film Investment Corporation, which marketed American films overseas.