Tuck’s Spitfire was hit in the engine. It belched black smoke, covering his windscreen with oil. Too low to bail out, he shoved his canopy back and began looking for a field in which to crash-land. Peering through the smoke, Tuck sighted an open field, banked his Spitfire around and began gliding in. Suddenly, he saw tracers flash over his head. He saw a truck-mounted, multiple-barreled 20mm flak gun firing at him.

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Angered, Tuck shoved the stick forward and fired a single burst at the 20mm before hitting the field a few yards beyond. At first, he expected to be lynched for shooting up the flak gun. Instead, to his surprise, the Germans complimented Tuck for his marksmanship–one of his 20mm shells had gone up the flak gun’s barrel, splitting it open like a banana.

Tuck was soon invited by Oberst (Colonel) Adolf Galland, former commander of Jagdgeschwader (fighter wing) 26 until his promotion on December 5 to General der Jagdflieger, to have dinner with him and his pilots at St. Omer. Tuck had encountered Galland during a Duxford Wing fighter sweep in 1941, when two Me-109s bounced the wing from above. Tuck’s wingman was shot down; then Tuck had downed Galland’s wingman.

‘So that was you?’ Tuck said. ‘I got your number two as he passed in front.’

‘And I got yours,’ Galland replied, ‘which makes us–how do you say it–even stevens?’

During dinner, Tuck talked with Galland and his pilots about drinking, the weather and British aces like Sailor Malan and Brendan ‘Paddy’ Finucane as if ‘they were old chums temporarily absent.’

‘I am very glad that you are not badly hurt,’ Galland said to Tuck at the end of the evening, ‘and that you will not have to risk your life anymore.’

The next day, January 29, 1942, Tuck was transferred under guard to the Dulag Luft transit camp near Leipzig, Germany. Shortly afterward, he was sent to Stalag Luft III prison camp at Sagan, south of Berlin. There he met his old squadron leader Roger Bushell and other fliers who had been captured.

Tuck was not a very cooperative prisoner. He made numerous escape attempts, once trying to sneak out of the camp inside a garbage wagon. In late 1943, Tuck was slated to be one of 200 RAF prisoners of war who would try to escape through a 400-foot-long tunnel, called ‘Harry.’ Then one morning during roll call, Tuck and 18 other prisoners were suddenly transferred to a camp called Belaria, six miles from Sagan.

Not long after Tuck and the others were moved, 76 POWs escaped through Harry on March 24, 1944. All but three of the escapees were recaptured. Fifty, including Roger Bushell, were murdered by the Gestapo. By missing what came to be called the ‘Great Escape,’ Tuck had surely escaped death once again.

Tuck remained at Belaria until January 1945, when he and the other prisoners were herded west by the Germans to keep them away from the advancing Russians. When they reached the village of Bransdorf in Upper Silesia, they were locked inside several barns by their captors. Tuck, along with a Polish RAF pilot named Zbishek Kustrzynski, buried himself under a pile of straw, and the two remained there while the other POWs moved on. Then they left the barn and headed east.

The escapees finally made contact with the Russians on February 22, 1945. They eventually were sent to Odessa, on the Black Sea, where they boarded the liner Dutchess of Richmond on March 26, 1945. The war ended soon thereafter.

Tuck remained in the RAF, serving in posts in England and overseas until he retired on May 13, 1949. He became a mushroom farmer in Kent, married and had two sons. He died on May 5, 1987, at age 70.

Tuck was recognized by his fellow RAF pilots–and former foes like Galland–as one of the great fighter pilots of WWII. His final tally was 29 victories and eight probables, making him the eighth-ranked RAF ace. The young man who had almost failed at flight school had certainly learned his craft well and, with a little luck, had lived to tell about it.

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