He was a man of striking looks and personality, perhaps added to in a way by the long scar on his face as a result of a pre-war flying accident. He was concerned about his image and possibly not averse, occasionally, to enhancing some of the stories that fed it.
It is strange therefore that this heroic and enigmatic man, who died in 1987, hardly attracted the attention of biographers for many years. There was Larry Forrester’s book, Fly for Your Life (1956) but that reads in large part like a novel and there is little or no evidence for some of its more colourful yarns. Many years ago I asked ‘Pete’ Brothers about an incident, alleged by Forrester to have happened on 257 Squadron. His reply was, “I was there and I think if that had happened I would remember, don’t you?”
Now at last we have Stanford Tuck (Grub Street), a more orthodox biography from Dr Helen Doe. She too dismisses some of the Forrester claims. One example is the suggestion that, after Tuck and fellow Battle of Britain veteran, Flight Lieutenant Zbigniew Kustrzynski, escaped from a column of prisoners in early 1945, they fought with the Russians. In Helen’s more believable version they eventually gave themselves up to a Red Army officer and spent some adventurous and risky weeks in Russian hands before they boarded the temporary troopship, Duchess of Richmond, at Odessa, with other former prisoners, and sailed to safety. They did not bear Russian arms.
As any biographer should, Helen Doe wanders down some of the byways of her subject’s life. I had forgotten, perhaps I never knew, that, in 1956, he was one of the earliest subjects of the British version of the TV programme This is Your Life.
His fellow escaper, Kustrzynski, was flown from Canada for a reunion and present too was “Titch” Havercroft, a Sergeant Pilot on 92 Squadron in 1940 but a still-serving Wing Commander in 1956. Another guest was Albert Stringer. He had entered Tuck’s life as landlord of The Ferry Inn at Horning in Norfolk, not far from RAF Coltishall. On 26 April 1941 Mr Stringer was one of the few survivors when a stray bomb hit The Ferry. Tuck and his future wife had left shortly before.
There is ever confusion about Tuck’s name. He was born with the surname Tuck and the given names, Roland Robert Stanford. He joined the RAF as R R S Tuck and therefore he appears as “Tuck” on the Memorial Wall at Capel-le-Ferne, in Men of the Battle of Britain and on the London Monument.
Helen Doe pinpoints what she feels is the first written use of “Stanford Tuck” as a surname, on a combat report during the Battle of Britain, and she puts forward two possible reasons. Later, “Stanford-Tuck” made an appearance as well.
Geoff Simpson, FRHistS
