1. Joseph Raphael Hunt was an American tennis player of the late 1930s and early 1940s from Southern California.
14 Facts About Joe Hunt
1. 2.
Joe Hunt was the number one ranked American in 1943 and won the US singles championship in his final match.
3.
Joe Hunt died off the coast of Florida in an airplane crash during World War II.
4.
Joe Hunt was very athletic, and he played football for a while.
5.
Joe Hunt made the semifinals at the 1939 and 1940 United States singles championships.
6.
When order was finally restored, Joe Hunt went on to win the match in straight sets.
7.
Joe Hunt represented the United States in the 1939 International Lawn Tennis Challenge challenge round against Australia.
8.
Joe Hunt played the doubles match partnering Jack Kramer which they lost to John Bromwich and Adrian Quist.
9.
On match point, Joe Hunt collapsed with leg cramps while his opponent, Jack Kramer, who due to food poisoning had lost 19 pounds during tournament, hit a return that barely went long.
10.
Joe Hunt was unable to obtain leave from the Navy in 1944 in order to defend his title.
11.
Joe Hunt was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1966.
12.
Joe Hunt was a graduate from the Naval Academy at Annapolis.
13.
Joe Hunt became a lieutenant in the US Navy during World War II and served a year on a destroyer in the Pacific and a year in the Atlantic.
14.
On February 2,1945, close to his 26th birthday, Joe Hunt was killed on a routine gunnery training mission off Daytona Beach, Florida when the fighter airplane that he was piloting, a Grumman Hellcat, went into a spin at an altitude of 10,000 feet from which he failed to recover.