John Fitch - Telegraph His parents separated when he was a young boy, and John's mother subsequently married George Spindler, head of the luxury car manufacturer, Stutz, and a keen amateur racing driver in his own right. The boy's first experience of racing came as a passenger in a Stutz "Bearcat," a First World War-era racer, driven by his father at breakneck speed around the Indianapolis speedway. Together, father and son were frequent spectators at the Indy 500, but John Fitch was left unenthralled by the monotony of the oval track, and hankered after the more complex twists and turns of European circuits. He was educated at Kentucky Military Institute but dropped out of his Civil Engineering course at Lehigh University, in Pennsylvania, after only a year. He embarked on a road trip instead, riding a motorcycle to New Orleans, then driving a Fiat 500 to New York. By early 1939 he was in London, having taken one of eight passenger berths on a freighter to Europe. His initial plan had been to ride, on horseback, from Paris to Rome. But the prospect of war had scuppered the project, and he had to satisfy his wanderlust with trips around the English countryside in a MG Magnette. His frequent stops to take tourist snaps once saw him arrested on potential charges of espionage. That September, after war was declared, he volunteered for the RAF, but was turned down. Returning to America, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. Less than a week after the attack on Pearl Harbor he was awarded his wings and posted first to New York (on harbour defence duties), then to North Africa after the Torch landings, flying a Douglas Havoc A20 light bomber. As the war moved into its final stages, he was based in England, where he converted to the Mustang, flying on bomber-escort operations. On one mission he noticed a Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter taking off, and shot down the revolutionary aircraft before it could deploy its far superior speed against his Mustang. "It was exciting, I must tell you, because we were so outmatched," he told The Hartford Courant in 2006. Our tactics were to try to hit them on the ground before they reached the sky. I was lucky to attack mine just after his wheels went up. I had the advantage of altitude before he reached full speed. My six 50-caliber guns lit up one engine and he rolled over and went down. But in March 1945, while he was attacking a German supply train, Fitch's own aircraft was hit. Having parachuted to safety, he was taken prisoner. Liberated in May, he settled in Florida, where he acquired a pontoon plane which he would use for jaunts to the Caribbean and fell in with the glittering society in Palm Beach. Fellow guests at the parties he attended included Noël Coward, Orville Wright and Joe Kennedy (whose sons - Jack, Bobby and Ted - Fitch sailed with, and whose widowed daughter, Kathleen, he dated. "She was a high-spirited gal," he recalled). At one event he stepped outside into the darkness to relieve himself and found himself next to the Duke of Windsor, who was doing likewise. "We had a delightful little chat...[and] later got to know each other quite well," Fitch said. After setting up his failed car dealership, Fitch's first race came on June 11 1949 at Bridgehampton Raceway in Long Island, where he finished fifth in an MG TC. Soon he had notched his first victory, in Palm Beach, and in 1951 he won his first international event (and a kiss from Eva Peron) at Buenos Aires, in an Allard powered by a V8 Cadillac engine. That season Fitch drove for Briggs Cunningham, a wealthy racing magnate and yachtsman, taking part in Le Mans and winning the Sports Car Club of America national championship. He fell in with Mercedes the following year, meeting Rudolph Uhlenhaut, then head of Mercedes motorsports, on his return to Le Mans. As a result he drove a prototype Mercedes 300SL in the 1952 coast-to-coast Carrera Panamericana. But Fitch was still racing for Cunningham in 1953 when he won the 12-hour endurance race at Sebring, Florida, and was named Sports Car Driver of the year by Speed Age magazine. At Mercedes, Fitch teamed up with Moss to win the Royal Automobile Club's Tourist Trophy in Northern Ireland. But the Le Mans crash marked the end of his career in Europe, as Mercedes withdrew from racing. Fitch returned to America to race with Chevrolet and renew his partnership with Cunningham, first in Jaguars, then Maseratis. His career behind the wheel lasted until 1966. Apart from his work on safety devices, he had also become involved in adapting production cars, notably the Chevrolet Corvair, with upgrades and tuning touches from the world of racing. One, the Fitch Sprint, proved extremely popular. He was also behind a brief-lived racing car, the Phoenix, based too on the Corvair. In retirement he continued to drive in motorsport events, notably those for vintage cars, such as the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Then, in 2003, when he was 85, he travelled to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah in an attempt to drive a 50-year-old Mercedes 300SLR faster than one had ever been driven before. He made it to more than 150mph but, thwarted by mechanical failures, failed to break the record then, and again in 2005. John Fitch married Elizabeth Huntley, to whom he proposed on the night of his first race. "I had never seen an auto race before," she recalled in an interview before her death in 2009, "[but] I was his first pit crew." He is survived by three sons. John Fitch, born August 4 1917, died October 13 2012