Early Life
John Fitch was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1917. Fitch's stepfather was an executive with the Stutz Motor Company, which introduced him to cars and racing at an early age. In his youth, Fitch would build cars from junk and drive them. In 1939 he saw the last auto race at Brooklands before the outbreak of World War II.
Fitch attended Kentucky Military Institute, then studied civil engineering at Lehigh University. In 1941 he volunteered for the US Army Air Corps. His service took him to North Africa, where he flew the A-20 Havoc and then on to England. By 1944, Captain Fitch was a P-51 Mustang pilot with the 4th Fighter Group, 335th Fighter Squadron, and is credited with shooting down a Messerschmitt Me 262 jet. Two months before the end of the war, he was shot down himself while making an ill-advised third strafing pass on an Axis train and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war.
Read more about this topic: John Fitch (racing Driver)
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“I, for one, have never in my life come across a perfectly healthy human being.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)