John Stuart Hindmarsh (1907–1938), test pilot and racing driver,

John Stuart Hindmarsh (1907–1938), test pilot and racing driver, was born at St Leonards on Sea, Sussex, on 25 November 1907, the son of Donald Stuart Hindmarsh, stockbroker, and his wife, Annie Stuart, née Campbell. Educated at Sherborne School, he attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, before gaining a commission in the Royal Army Tank Corps. In 1930 he was seconded to the Royal Air Force and learned to fly, resigning his army commission to join the RAF. He was a noted Talbot and Lagonda driver in the 1930s, winning the Le Mans 24 hour race with Luis Fontes, in a Lagonda, in 1935. In 1935 he joined the Hawker aircraft company, based at Kingston upon Thames, as a test pilot. Having survived a crash when testing a Hawker Fury in Portugal in 1937, he was killed shortly after taking off from Brooklands aerodrome on 6 September 1938, when the Hawker Hurricane which he was flying at about 400 mph crashed on South Road, St George's Hill, near Weybridge, Surrey. He left a wife, Violette Cordery, and two daughters one of whom went on to marry the racing driver Roy Salvadori.