[citation needed] Tunstall was born in Chadwell St Mary, Essex, in 1918 and moved to the nearby village of Orsett at the age of three.

Evans – a World War I Royal Flying Corps pilot and double prisoner-of-war escapee – that if he was captured, "Your first duty was to try to escape.

He was captured on the night of 26/27 August 1940, when, due to a wireless failure, his aircraft became lost and crash-landed on the Dutch coast.

It was during his incarceration at Spangenberg Castle that Tunstall, along with Eustace Newborn and Dominic Bruce came up with the escape plan known as "the Swiss Commission".

At the end of the war, he was recommended for an award by MI9, but it was turned down by the Colonel Willie Tod, the senior British officer at Colditz.

After leaving the RAF, he joined Laker Airways before emigrating to South Africa, where he worked as an actor as well as continuing to fly.