American Hero: The True Story of Tommy Hitchcock--Sports Star, War Hero, and Champion of the War-Winning P-51 Mustang

by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., W. Averell Harriman (Foreword), Richard L. Jackson (Introduction)

This is the true story of Tommy Hitchcock, a war hero, the world’s greatest polo player, businessman, husband of a Mellon, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s idol after whom he fashioned two of his most famous fictional characters.

Born in 1900 to a wealthy Long Island family of fox hunters and polo players, he joined the French Lafayette Flying Corps at age 17 when the U.S. Air Force said he was too young for combat flying in World War I. He shot down two German planes before being shot down himself. At age 18, he was captured and was put on a German prisoner train from which he leapt to freedom and then snuck across enemy lines for 50 miles to safety in Switzerland. He returned home a hero, played polo at Harvard, and began his legendary career as a 10 goal player for almost 15 years, a feat never equaled in the U.S. He led American teams in international tournaments all over the world and played with some of the greatest players in the game, including his friends Winston Guest, Averill Harriman, and John Hay Whitney. He married Margaret Mellon, the beautiful daughter of William Larimer Mellon who was Chairman of Gulf Oil and a member of the Pittsburgh banking family, with whom he had four children.

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald knew the Hitchcocks from living across the water from one another at Great Neck and Sands Point. Fitzgerald biographers have noted that he was in awe of Hitchcock, the wealthy WASP sportsman with the charmed life, and he modeled Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby after Tommy as well as the Tommy Barban character in Tender is the Night.

Hitchcock became a partner in the Lehman Brothers brokerage firm on Wall Street and commuted to work from Sands Point in a seaplane. When World War II broke out, he lobbied to become a fighter pilot, but the Pentagon told him he was too old. He finagled his way into a role teaching pilots how to fly in England and he championed the B-51 Mustang airplane when the allies were losing the air war to Germany’s Luftwaffe. Tragically, he died in a test flight in 1944 aboard a newly revamped Mustang while flying a nose dive over a field in rural England. His death was front page news all over the world.

320 pages, Hardcover

Published September 22, 2016

Reviews

[Keenan Johnston]

Tommy Hitchcock lived the all-American life. He was an accomplished fighter pilot in WWI, where he was shot down in German territory, held as a prisoner of war, and ultimately escaped into Switzerland. In civilian life, he gained international acclaim as the world's best polo player, as an accomplished investment banker for Lehman Brothers, and the father of 5 children. When WWII came around, Hitchcock was too old to fight, but used his celebrity in the development of the P-51 Mustang fighter plane with a Rolls Royce engine. These planes were a critical component to the ally advances and led Herman Goring to famously say, “The day I saw Mustangs over Berlin, I knew the jig was up.”.

The facts and accomplishments of Hitchcok's life are impressive enough, but the author did a nice job of elucidating what Hitchcock was like at a personal level. For someone so accomplished, he is a great example of humility. Tommy Hitchcock was one of the rare people who's presence alone was heroic, and he never made any comments of judgment. Frustratingly even for many of his peers, Hitchcock had no interest in gossip, and thus rarely shared any of his own personal feelings. "He was that rarity among schoolboys as someone so perfectly at ease in his own skin. He was completely without pretension. He had no side to him. He was modest not in the self deprecating manner of people who call attention to their virtues by minimizing them, but with the unthinking modesty of people who take even their best performances as a challenge to carry out an even better one."

My only criticism of the book is that it seemed too focused on the polo playing career of Hitchcock, with long periods of explanation of certain matches. I thought it could have gone even more in depth on his business career and military service, but overall great book.

[Jane]

Fame, schmame. Here's a man who, in his own day, was a superstar as big as David Beckham, a hero as well known as the first man on the moon - and you've never heard of him. Unless, of course, you happen to run in the arcane and impossibly wealthy world of polo and private planes. At 17, Hitchcock joined the French Air Force, becoming an ace and then being shot down over Germany. He escaped, walking over 100 miles to Switzerland. In the 20s and thirties, he was THE polo star, playing all over the world. He flew his own seaplane to work at Lehmann Bros from LI to New York, he married a beautiful heiress, and when WW11 began, he served again, this time in the US Air Force. And then he lost his life in a practice flight, an the long slide into oblivion began. But what a fun read to resurrect this guy!
PS I forgot to mention, Hitchcock was the model for two of F. Scott Fitzgerald's heroes, both named Tom: Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby and Tommy Barban in Tender Is The Night.