This is Bob Hoover, North American Aviation. Bob Hoover. He used to be a test pilot, one of the best. Today he's manager of customer relations for North America's Los Angeles division. And he's the man who demonstrates this plane. I never felt that I was any better than any other pilot. I just felt. This is what I want to do and I want to do it to the best of my ability. If you're interested in or involved with aviation, you'll likely know something about Robert Anderson. Bob Hoover. Yet he did so much, and touched so many during his long life and career, that even his admirers might be surprised at all that he did. On the other hand, if you're not familiar with the history and evolution of American aviation, there really is no quick way to describe the true American hero, the authentic national treasure known as Bob Hoover. My name is Sean D Tucker. I have flown thousands of performances as an air show pilot. It's likely I'm alive today because of the lessons and the warnings I received from my friend Bob Hoover. And by the way, I could introduce you to a banquet hall full of people who will tell you the same thing. Here's a Fun run. It's a holy hot fire. Blade runner, Let's go! The immortal aviation pioneer, Medal of Honor recipient and Air Force General Jimmy Doolittle once called Bob the greatest Stick and rudder man that ever lived. I don't know, but I take Jimmy's word for it. Bob was certainly the best I ever saw. But there is no Bob Hoover elevator speech. I can't tell you he was the first pilot to solo across an ocean nonstop or a combat fighter race. He wasn't the first pilot to exceed the speed of sound or to walk on the moon. But I can tell you that Bob Hoover had the complete respect and admiration of the pilots who did those things. They knew that Bob Hoover not only possessed a transcendental gift for flying airplanes, but also a set of core values that invariably drove him to do the right thing for his fellow pilots. For his employer, for his country, for aviation. I was honored to be one of the celebrants of his memorial service when he left us in late 2016. I'll admit, I didn't always understand all the dimensions of Bob Hoover's gift. It took me a while to completely grasp all that Bob Hoover knew about flying and all that he had done in his life. A life that was so inspired, so courageous, and so fully lived that if you proposed it as a book or a movie, it would probably be rejected for being too farfetched. But I can assure you that Bob's life and Bob's gift were real. They were as real as it gets. It was doing the depression era, of course, when I grew up and uh, my father had to work at two jobs in order to put food on the table. As soon as I was old enough, I had to start earning my own money just for lunches in, at school and uh any spending money I wanted and when I got to sixteen, I got a job in a grocery store on Saturdays and as a result I earned $2.00 a day. And if I got any tips for carrying out groceries that would be another fifteen or twenty cents. And I was so interested, enthused about aviation. I'd been building model airplanes and even some that you could fly with a rubber band. And when an airplane would fly over, I'd run outside and look at it. It wouldn't be very often, but it was a big thrill to me to see an airplane flying. And then I'd ride my bicycle to the airport and it was quite a ride. And then I would get 15 minutes, flying time. So it took me for a long, long time to get enough hours to solo. And then once I soloed, I I fought nausea throughout the whole time frame, just absolutely sick every time I get in the air. So I had to overcome that, but I kept pushing myself right into the the threshold of of nausea every flight and I keep doing it until I got over it and then I went to something else. And at 18, when I graduated, I already knew what I wanted to do and I'd already learned to fly and I had encountered every obstacle you could find about not being able to fly. I found out my eyes were weak and I also found out that I had nausea, air sickness every time I got off the ground. My first flight. That was devastating to me because I dreamed of nothing else and I decided that I was not going to accept that I could not do what I really wanted to do and it was to become a pilot. I was not going to accept that I could not do what I really wanted to do. Time and time again throughout his life, Bob's resolved to speak and act according to his own conviction put him at odds with authority and often in very real physical danger. At the same time, that determination had everything to do with his greatness as an aviator and an American. Bob Hoover was 18 years old in 1940. He graduated high school that spring. College was never a consideration. He was laser focused on his dream of flying and the Tennessee of that era, with money tough to come by, the most probable pathway to the cockpit for Bob Hoover was to join the Tennessee Air National Guard. By the time I joined I was eighteen. I was in the service and as a an enlisted man, as a gunner, thinking if I join the air guard...and that's what I did. That the pilots would probably give me some stick time, which they did. They were very generous. Flying time. Stick time, as pilots call it, is everything to a new pilot. Bob Hoover was a young man who had done every job he could from the time he was 12 years old, delivering newspapers, stocking coal furnaces, stocking grocery shelves in order to get stick time. I decided I'd start experimenting with maneuvers, and I started teaching myself acrobatics. And I I just thought, well, if the airplane were roll, what if you stopped it here and here like this? And so I started working on that. It didn't bother me and I did it to eight points. Then I went to 16 points and I was doing inverted maneuvers. This selfdesigned training program yielded an interesting result when Bob began flying in the National Guard. So I went off to flight training and I got there and got my first check ride. This instructor said I'd like I'd like to show you a slow roll. Is that okay? And I said yes Sir. And he did one and he said, would you like to try? And I said, yes, Sir. Boy, he said, you can do it as well as I can. He said, what else can you do? So I did this for him. And he's looked at me, you know, in the mirror and shook his head. We got on the ground. He went into the commandant's office and he said, Sir, I've got a problem. And the commandant said, well, just go ahead and wash him out if he's a problem, he said. You don't understand. He can fly better than me or anybody I've ever seen fly. Next thing I know, he called me in, the commandant did, and he said I want you to give check rides to all of the instructors. And so the whole time I was in primary, I didn't learn anything. I was teaching. Finally, they lowered the age from 21 to 18 for pilot training, and my commanding officer said All the pilots say you've got a lot of skill, young man, and you don't have to go to flight training. We'll just Commission, you right here and you can fly all of the airplanes. But for young Bob Hoover, that wasn't quite enough. I think we've got storm clouds over Europe. That and I believe someday we're going to be in there a conflict of war and if we are, I want to be out there fighting and if, if I accept the Commission here, I'll have an O in my wingshield and that means observation, pilot, and you cannot fly combat. And I had wanted to be a fighter pilot in the worst way. And so I asked him and I said, Sir, could you get me an assignment to flight training so I could be qualified for combat? And he said, well of course I can. Bob had vision problems all his life. He wore fairly thick glasses for as long as I knew him. But to be a fighter pilot in World War Two, you needed to begin flight training with 2020 Vision. If your vision degraded during training, you might be allowed to fly with corrective lenses, but not to start with. Once again, Bob's gift provided the way around an obstacle. The flight surgeon who would test his vision had seen him fly. And he said all the air guard pilots tell me how skilled you are. And he said I want you to pass this exam, but I'm concerned that you're going to have to work awful hard to get it. So he was trying to clue me. Sergeant, he said. I've got a couple of things I've got to do in my office, and when I come back, I want you to read that bottom line for me. So he gave me about 30 minutes to memorize the letters and two lines or two lower lines that I couldn't read. It's it's sort of an interesting thing. I went through the same flight training as a cadet did and when we when we graduated, I was still a Sergeant and all the rest of the people that were officers and they didn't have any experience like I had it all. But yeah, I was a Sergeant. And when I when we went into fighter training, I was have made a flight leader just right off. Well then about a month later, my commanding officer called me in and he said I'm putting you in charge of 67 fighter pilots and you're headed for England. Now his country needed defending and he had managed to become a trainer of trainers. He could barely contain himself. I was enthusiastic. I had high ideals and expectations because I had learned a lot of things about aviation that other people had not had an opportunity to do. But Bob had another obstacle to overcome. The Army Air Corps plan for him did not include flying combat. We got to Africa and when we arrived there I was the first to get an assignment and boy, I was just anxious to go and I checked into where I had to check into and they said we're separating you from your men and you're going to be testing airplanes, taking them up for their first time. They're coming overseas in ships. We've already got two shiploads waiting now to be assembled, and when they get them assembled, you're going to fly them around and check them out until they're ready to go to combat, I said, Boy, I wanted to go to combat. We had a few translators who were French and they could communicate with them and we had some people that could communicate with the French. Well, that's a hell of a way to build an airplane. And they assembled these airplanes. And I tell you it was death defined. Every time I flew, there'd be something wrong drastically, and I'd have to fly the same airplane sometimes six or eight times, to get rid of all the squawks to make sure that it was ready to go into combat. That was with P-40s and P-39s. Though disappointed at not being in the fight, Bob took to the flying as he always did. Every time I fly, even to this day at my age, I want to do it better than the last time I was in that airplane and I'm, I try to be more precise, whether it's aerobatics, keep my hand in with with all phases. Loyalty was a watchword with RA Bob Hoover. His friends, his fellow pilots, the Air Force, his country, anyone or anything who mattered in Bob Hoover's life could count on its unfailing loyalty. Probably no one knew that better than his friend and fellow Air Corps pilot Tom Watts. Tom and I took two new airplanes with external tags and went around the enemy territory to get to to learn. And we signed off the paperwork, and we were planning on waiting for C-47 to pick us up. The Colonel in command of that fighter group said, "We've got two airplanes that have a lot of battle damage, but they're OK to fly, but not OK to go into combat with", Tom said if the engines check out, OK, let's go for it. But Tom's airplane quickly developed a problem. Bob, I've got a rough engine. I'll go back and see the puffs of black coming out of his exhaust stacks. And I said, Tom, do you see that little plateau over there on the top of that mountain? And he said. Yes. I said, that's the only chance you've got, I said. Or else you'll bail out and we'd never find you in these mountains. And I said, why don't you take a look at it and make your decision. And so he looked at it and he said I'm going for it. And he got down, got stopped. Bob later wrote I knew Tom would never have left me in a similar situation. I was determined that we either both make it back. Or neither one of us would. Tom Watts later wrote. He pulled around and dragged the field. Then his gear moved down slowly and locked. Was this damn fool going to land? He did, and it was a beauty. He brought his ship over alongside of me. My buddy wouldn't leave me. The P-40s Bob Hoover and Tom Watts were flying were single seat planes and only Bob's was flyable. Bob somehow flew both of them home with an open canopy. We tried to squeeze him in and I took my parachute off and just used the seat, the parachute as a seat cushion so I could see out adequately. And he put his feet down in here like this on the sides of the seat and then leaned over and this much of his head out here, this much was sticking out in the wind he couldn't close the canopy and my face was against the gun sight. Well, I took off and I decided we couldn't get above 140 knots because he's going to be in the wind with his face and he had his eyes protected and his little other helmet on, and we were looking good on the fuel for making it. But it was a miserable experience for I guess, I suppose two hours. My face pressed against the the gun sight and his mouth was torn back through the corners of his lips here from the wind catching his mouth when he tried to say something or and we got there and it was almost dark. I said I've got a mayday and explained the situation to the controller and and we went in and they cleared the pill? because I I didn't know if I was going to be able to land it because I was sitting down in the seat too, and I didn't know if I had enough room to pull the stick or if I could see well enough. And I was really planted against that head, that that gun site. And we got on the ground and a taxi in Okay and I looked in his face and boy, I couldn't believe it. And he said look at yours when you get a chance. I was black and blue for the gun sight on the side of my face. Well, he was black and blue the next day and we were too happy clowns. But that, to me was the most outstanding thing that I did in World War Two. Remember, Bob had refused the offer of automatic Commission as a flight officer because that kind of Commission would have left him unqualified for combat, and combat was his goal from the beginning. In the course of doing his job in the ferry command, specifically delivering new P-40s to a fighter unit, he took his destiny into his own hands. We got all six P-40s on the ground safely and I went into the tent to do the paperwork and they were putting all of that gear into the V-25 and A two star General I looked up and there he was and he said, "young man, I'd like to talk to you about your mission". And I said, Sir, I said I came into this Air Force to work, fly for our country and and fight the enemy. And I said I had a taste of it in England and each assignment I've had since has had nothing to do with combat. And I said I think I'm as qualified to to be a good fighter pilot as anybody could be. I said I can hit the target consecutively, right side up or inverted, and I said I can hit a target out of four consecutive loops, that means every loop has to be perfectly round to be in position to fire and the target each time you come through. And it's very difficult. Most people do loops in a sort of L-shape you move out and he listened to me and he said, young man, he said that's a hell of a story. He said if you can really fly that well ..and I said what Sir? you could contact Colonel McNichol because he's watched me do this demonstrations I do and and I said he told me if I could ever get a transfer that he'd make me a flight leader. If I can get an appointment to his outfit and he's in the 52nd Fighter Group, he commands it. He said son you'll have your orders within two weeks. But things weren't quite that simple. Perhaps they never are, but then again, this is Bob Hoover we are talking about. Nothing happened. Weeks went by, nothing happened and I was getting other assignments and I was just down in the dumps in the worst way and finally this Sergeant called me and he was a a clerk for this Colonel Epright whom I reported to his care Ferry command. He said, Mr. Hoover, your orders have been on the colonel's desk since you went on that trip to Sicily. And he said, I asked the Colonel when he was going to tell you about it and he said I'm not going to tell him about it, I'm not going to let him transfer. I'm going to keep him right here. I picked up the phone and I called the Colonel and I said Colonel, I just had a phone call from headquarters. (fibbing). And I said they want to know why I hadn't reported for duty and Sicily. And he said, because I'm damn well not going to let you go. He said I I cannot operate this thing without you. And I said, well Sir, I'm, I'm really disappointed you feel that way. And they said, well you've got to get that in in your head that you're not going to be able to get transferred. And so I said, well, thank you Sir. And my next flight was to Palermo Sicily with Spitfires to the 52nd Fighter Group. Yep, you guessed it. Once he got to the 52nd Fighter Group, knowing the generals orders were in fact sitting on his boss's desk, he had no intention of returning to the ferry command. I put my foot locker in the back of the airplane and I took two copilots. I'd been training to be my be a pilot on the B-25 and I had led Spitfires, six of them, into Palermo, Sicily. And when I got there, I said, fellows, you're on your own. And I took my foot locker out of the airplane and I asked someone, someone on the line there take me over the Jeep to the Colonel's office and boy, he put his arms around me and he said, oh, I've been hoping this day would come. And he said, I've told all of the people in this fighter group about your expertise and he said I want you to put on a show for all of them. And so he brought all the three squadrons were located in different places into Palermo. He got everybody assembled and he said you're going to see something you've never seen before. But I want you to know one thing. If I catch any one of these fight you fighter pilots trying to duplicate what you're going to witness, I'm going to have you grounded. Bob Hoover believed. His bosses believed, and those who saw him fly fighters in those days believed he was simply the best there ever was, which makes what happened to him in combat all the more surreal. The day I was shot down we were dive bombing some transports, feeding supplies into to the Germans in southern France. There and we were attacked by four Focke wulf, 190s and we just pulled off of the target of releasing our bombs and we're all split up. I pulled out of a break like this and I was up about almost 90 degrees and I saw this Focke Wulf out here and I just ignored it. About that time I was hit and it believe it or not, it was a 90 degree deflection shot. Well, I I knew I had no choice. The fire was so bad I just rode it upside down and I hope that they weren't. It wouldn't hit me again. And I just rolled it upside down and fell out, hit the water, got tangled up in my parachute lines, and then I sat there in the water and I had shrapnel that came all through the bottom of the airplane and I was in the water all afternoon and a German Corvette was searching for. two of their pilots that had gone down and they found me. And I'll remember for as long as I lived, trying to sink my escape kit because I didn't want the Germans to catch it. I'm sure by then they must have had hundreds of them. But it was a little encasement that had a saw saw blade encased in rubber which you inserted in your rectum and it had a map, a cloth map of the area we were fighting in and it had some chocolate bars some other things that could keep you from from severe pain. This it was a Corvette and it had a a like a ladder coming down with a platform on the bottom right near the water line. So finally they had a long pole with a hook on it and they hooked me and pulled me onto that platform. Being a prisoner of the Germans was a new reality for Bob, but it didn't change him, it just gave him a new set of objectives. They took me off and put me in a dungeon and I lived with the rats for the next day or so, and then they took me out for interrogation. They took me to a real fine hotel that there was a ability spot for all the German offices in that area and the families were with them in some cases and they tied me up on a big column in the in the lobby with my hands behind me like this, and the wives would come by and spit on me and slap me. And I I did understand why. Because so many of them had lost their families and their homes in the bombings that that we were doing and our endurity. Of course I was madder than a hornet at the time it was happening. But as I reflected on it, well, I had the wrong attitude. I wanted to escape and I never quit trying till the day I did. Bob endured 16 months in that camp. He repeatedly tried to escape, but was caught, beaten, and put in solitary each time. But gaining his freedom was now Bob's focus, and I believe determination was the engine that drove Bob Hoover in every circumstance of his life. Bob was in that camp so long that Allies had nearly defeated Germany, in fact, General Dwight D Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe. Issued a new order to pilots and airmen being held in German prison camps. It told them to stop risking their safety with escape attempts because they would shortly be liberated anyway. But again, this is Bob Hoover we are talking about. I ignored that. I kept right on attempting to escape because I wanted out. The War in Japan was still going on and I wanted to get in on that. The day I got out, I got a diversion going. I got some of the fellows that I'd worked with on his some of the escape attempts to start a fight, and once they started the the fight got all the guards attention. But half of the guards had deserted by then. We could hear the big guns about Oh, 50-70 miles away. And uh we got to the other side and now we're away from the Germans, for the most part out in open countryside. After three days on the run in Germany, very hungry, Bob Hoover and his fellow escapee came to a farmhouse occupied by the wife of a German officer. Her husband was based elsewhere. Luckily, she spoke English. In exchange for some food, Bob wrote her a letter to give to the advancing Allied troops. The letter asked the Allies to treat her kindly because of the help she had provided him. As he was leaving she also gave him a pistol. Bob was on the hunt for a German airplane he could use to fly himself to the Allied lines and freedom as he continued to move around the German countryside. He was in and out of the lines of the Russian troops. The Russians were vengeful enemies. Bob witnessed unspeakable brutality inflicted on Germans by the Russians. Eventually, Bob made his way to a deserted airfield and started looking for an airplane. Finally I found one that was full of bullet holes but the engine was OK and it was full of fuel and I said I'm going to wait till a mechanic walks by here. And I'm going to put the gun on him and bring him in here and help him get me the airplane started. So finally a German mechanic did come by and I pointed the gun at him and yelled and he and I'm motioned for him to to come into the vet but and he walked in there boy he was just we put his hands up and his face was just pale as a ghost. The German showed Bob how to start the Focke-Wulf 190 airplane. And Bob decided it would be too risky to taxi the airplane slowly out to a runway. He simply firewalled it out of the revetment where it was parked. I let it go and I went straight out of that revetment, got airborne, got the gear up and it was a 4000 foot ceiling. And I know more than got off the ground and I started thinking, you know, this is the dumbest thing you've ever done. Here you are in an enemy airplane and the war is not over. And I, our Air Force people come in and see you. They going to take an easy potshot at you and your dead. And I headed north until I got to the South North Sea. Then I swung West and I thought, if I've got enough fuel to get to Holland, I'll see windmills and I'll know I'm in safe country. Bob had eventually landed the German airplane in a field in Holland. What he had no way of knowing was that under Nazi occupation, the Dutch population had experienced the highest per capita death rate of any country occupied by Hitler's forces. Now that they had been liberated, the local population was not likely to warmly welcome A pilot who had emerged from a German airplane, he was immediately surrounded by farmers with pitchforks and other weapons. They were marching them down a road when they encountered a British convoy. Bob was able to describe his situation to them and the Brits intervened. Sort of a hair raising and a very dumb thing to have done, you know, the war was practically over, but I had all I thought about every day, all day long was getting out and capturing one of their airplanes and I just so motivated. The day Bob Hoover stole that German airplane and flew himself to freedom he was 23 years old. The war in Europe was within months of being over when Bob escaped. Plans to turn our attention to the Pacific and Japan became moot with the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. After getting home, Bob wrote I'd spent nearly two and a half years overseas. It was an experience I'll never forget. I had seen the extremes of bravery and brutality, of kindness and cruelty, of loyalty and cowardliness. Above all, I knew more than ever what it meant for one to lose that precious gift of freedom. When you first lose your freedom, and I've said this to so many young people, you don't know what we have here in this country to you can't see that red, white and Blue Flag. You don't know what that stands for. That's freedom. The Air Force films of the Army's newest fighting plane, the jet propelled P-80 shooting star. The -P80 is believed to be the fastest fighter in existence. The secret of its spectacular speed lies in the new knife edged wing and it's powerful kerosene burning jet engine. World War II was the dawn of the Jet Age. Few inventions have done more to shrink the geographic and cultural distances between peoples than the jet engine. We are now in our third generation of people who take the speed, reliability and comfort of jets for granted in part. We can thank Bob Hoover for that. Bob Hoover became a US Air Force test pilot following the war. He was one of a handful of pilots who took on the arduous and dangerous task of flying the new jets, including America's first jet, the P-80. It was an experience for those of us who flew some of those early jets. You see you had we had to change engines started out at two hours and we got up to five hours and into 10 hours just for the life of the engine. And so there was always maintenance going on with The Jets. They they didn't have a fuel control and most people wouldn't understand this. But then starting a jet engine, back in those days without a fuel control, you were the fuel controller and you'd do it like this when you start the engine because if you let the the R, if the RPM didn't start moving upward when you were trying to start it, you'd overheat the engine. So you glued your eyes to the tailpipe temperature and the RPM, and it would take it maybe two or three minutes to get an engine started. Because then when you once got it started to go from idle to taxi speed, you couldn't just put the throttle up. You had to ease it up and ease it back again, watching the temperature and and now to get up to speed engine speed for takeoff you'd have to sit there and play with it like this again. And now this meant that after you finished your flight and wanted to land, there was no margin for error because if you were found you were too slow or or short of the runway, you'd never get the throttle up there to get the power to Make you reach the runway. Something to think about the next time you sink into your seat on an airliner while assigned to right field. Bob quickly learned that being a test pilot during the day paid certain dividends. When he and his friends went out in the evening on a blind date and Dayton, he met Colleen Humrickhouse. She later said the thing that held Bob back was my maiden name. He used to introduce me as Colleen Jones. Her name soon became Colleen Hoover, and it remains so for 68 years until her death in March of 2016. Bob Hoover was a true Southern gentleman. I flew with him on the air show circuit for so long and we became such close friends That it was easy to think of him as just one of the guys. It was easy to forget what an important role he played in aviation history. For example, guess who demonstrated the jet airplane to the inventor of powered flight, Orville Wright? Colonel asked me to take this one airplane and it was on a test phrase and and I put on an aerobatic demonstration for him and I he came over to the airplane he had a. Some people with him, of course. And I was getting in the airplane and he shook hands with me and and told me he was he was interested in watching me fly. And then when I came back, why he congratulated me and that was just a couple of handshakes. But I was all inspired by saying that I'd met "The man". That's just another thing that's a little hard to get your head around when considering the life of RA Bob Hoover. He was born just 14 years after power flight was invented. He personally met Orville Wright. He flew anything and everything for the next 6 decades as a combat pilot, military test pilot, civilian test pilot. And an executive at North American Rockwell, the aerospace company that built the command module for the Apollo moon landing program, and the space shuttle orbiters Bob Hoover painted on a canvas that stretched from Kitty Hawk to the moon. Albert Einstein said intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them. Preventing problems was indeed the genius of Bob Hoover. As a test pilot, he knew that any problem he discovered could be solved before mass production was begun. In the world of aviation, that meant saving lives. Bob suffered no fools and made no compromises when it came to the hard realities of building safe airplanes and flying them properly. But standing one's ground and test flight often means speaking truth to power, and that can have consequences. One of the issues with the new jet airplanes was that their engines ran on jet fuel or kerosene, not gasoline. That was going to mean setting up a whole new fuel distribution system around the world, or finding a way for The Jets to fly on gasoline. After several tests of gasoline in the engines, it fell to Bob to perform an aerobatic routine for the Air Force Brass. Bob later wrote; Suddenly, at 10,000 feet, the engine flamed out. He survived the crash landing with only very minor injuries. Later that afternoon, he was ready for another flight to test ram jets in a P51 Mustang. Colonel Albert Boyd, the head of the test flight division at right field, thought otherwise. He ordered Bob out of the airplane. Boyd had counted up the number of force landings Bob had and found them to be more frequent than other pilots in the division, though Bob routinely took the riskiest flights, Boyd added. Nobody else seems to be having these kind of problems. It was likely the beginning of the end of Bob's Air Force career when he replied, well, Colonel, if you'd come down here and fly more often, you could assume some of the risks, too. In 1946 and 47, the race to break the sound barrier was on America's entry was the X1 built by the Bell Aircraft Company. The project civilian test pilot, Chalmers Goodland, was scheduled to make the first supersonic flight. There are conflicting accounts as to why he did not. The net result was the news broke at the Wright field flight test center that the Air Force was seeking a volunteer to break the sound barrier. Several of the pilots, including Bob Hoover, applied. According to Bob Hoover's autobiography, titled Forever Flying, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Council had chosen him to make the flight. But then Bob did a favor for a fellow pilot, a favor that changed history. And I was selected for the X-1 program and was asked by A friend of mine who. wasn't flying jets. Fly over the Springfield Airport the first chance you get with the jet and I'll tell him it was me. Mistake number 1. In most of the jet test flights, every ounce of fuel was consumed, but on one flight the weather was so bad Bob could not get accurate data, so he broke it off. So I came back and I had a lot of fuel and there was a. Springfield Airport underneath me. I'll just. Make trip across the upside down, I did. The numbers on the side of the airplane was small. And I never thought anything about it. Two months went by and I was. elated about. being selected for the X-1 program and a new Colonel came in and he said. I just got a a letter here saying that somebody. Buzzed the Springfield Airport on such and such a date, was that you? I said yes, Sir, it was, he said well, I know two things about you. You're honest because there was only one jet that flew in the old United States that day and you were in it, but I also know that you're not responsible. He said, You're going to help him out. You're going to live with him, you're going to fly with him, You're Going to be his backup pilot and I thought, oh boy! You know There were sixteen people in that pyramid of candidates. to get to that peak I had made, and now I've lost it all. Of course, history tells us that as a result of Bob's decision, one of aviation's most significant milestones, exceeding the speed of sound for the first time was accomplished by his close friend, General Chuck Yeager, with Bob flying the chase plane. Interestingly enough, when the Allison Division of General Motors was looking for a chief test pilot and sought the Air Force's advice, Colonel Albert Boyd. The same Colonel Bob Hoover had accused of lacking the courage to make the risky flights told them Bob Hoover was the best in the business and General Motors recruited him aggressively. You will be the highest paid 27 year old in the General Motors Corporation if you accept this job and they had just lost a pilot and so I was accepted and the first thing he said to me is. I'll not only double your pay, but we will give you a brand new Cadillac of any design you want. You can give us the paint job and interior. All of the goodies it would spark an interest in any young guy. So Bob Hoover became a civilian test pilot, and as you might imagine, the kid from Nashville, TN, who purposely made himself sick in order to keep flying became a legend in that world as well. There was a reason for Bob Hoover to title his book Forever Flying. It was the tyranny of Biology, age alone, that finally dragged him out of the cockpit for the final time. It's kind of funny, but when my generation of pilots encountered Bob Hoover, we didn't think there's Bob Hoover, the guy who broke out of the prison camp and stole a German airplane. Or there's Bob Hoover, the guy who rescued his friend off a mountaintop by jamming him in a single seat airplane. Or there's Bob Hoover, who could have broken the sound barrier. Or there's Bob Hoover, who laid healing hands on everything from the P-39 to the F-86, the F-100, the Sabreliner, and even the F-18. When I met him, he was just one of us. Doing what he been doing since he was teaching the teachers in the Tennessee Air National Guard, demonstrating airplanes for people, but with superhuman grace and elegance. Nobody had a touch like Bob Hoover. Now the difficult thing to think about is try to pour backhanded to see it on on camera. Believe it or not, you can see the horizon going around as the tea is poured into the glass. He said at times you had to be gentle enough to milk a mouse. No matter how many offices or neckties they put him in, he always made them agree to let him keep flying. Bob Hoover was an artist, and his inspiration was the unknown. There's something about the unknown and and that's why I was so disappointed that I didn't get to make the first flight on the X-1. Every day you go out, you have no idea what the rest of the day it has in store for you and you get used to that. The adrenaline flows and you get excited about it and you you feel motivated because if if you can damage the enemy, that's why you're there. And I had been doing aerobatics and I was sought after to Perform and demonstrate different types of airplanes all over the world. And I enjoyed every one of those flights because they were in different countries and and before people that were enthusiastic about flying and wanted to know more about it. And that in itself was a another bit of adrenaline flowing, because I I can tell you for a fact you couldn't imagine how many accidents I've seen in my lifetime Where the pilots didn't survive. Bob Hoover's career covered an art from the Wright Brothers and Kitty Hawk to today's space age. His list of personal friends, admirers and flying mates included Orville Wright, Charles Lindbergh, Jimmy Doolittle, Chuck Yeager. Yuri Gagarin, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong and hundreds more. And most of them would agree with Jimmy Doolittle. He was the best there ever was. But if we miss the other aspects of Bob Hoover's gift, we miss everything. Courage. Both physical and moral. Loyalty, integrity. And the wild blue Yonder truth is uncompromising to Bob. That could not change on the ground. Generosity. Bob never stopped sharing. Advice, knowledge, inspiration, opportunities. He knew sharing these things could save lives, so he shared them tirelessly. Patriotism. Nobody believed more strongly in life Liberty and the pursuit of happiness and RA. Bob Hoover and I think something happened to him when he lost his liberty in that prison camp. The sanctity of freedom took up residence in his heart. You took your dignity in your own hands if you failed to properly respect the United States flag or a veteran in the presence of Bob Hoover. I was enthusiastic. I had High ideals and expectations. Because I had learned a lot of things about aviation that other people had not had an opportunity to do, I never felt that I was any better than any other pilot. I just felt this is what I want to do and I want to do it to the best of my ability. But what made my friend Bob Hoover were so special and so important to aviation in the nation, was not the gift he possessed. It was his undying willingness to share them with the rest of us.
