Bob Hoover

R. A. "Bob" Hoover was a legendary air show pilot and USAF test pilot

Bob Hoover learned to fly Nashville's Berry Field, while working at a local grocery store to pay for the flight training. He enlisted in the Tennessee National Guard and was sent for pilot training with the Army. He first major assignment of the war was testing flying the assembled aircraft ready for service. He was later assigned with the Spitfire equipped 52nd Fighter group in Sicily. On his 59th mission he was shot down over Southern France, and was taken prisoner. He spent 16 months at the German prison camp at Stalag Luft 1.

He managed to escape the prison camp, and steal a FW-190 (or so the legend goes), and fly to safety in Holland. After the war he was assigned to flight test duty as Wright Field. There he impressed and befriend Chuck Yeager. Later when Yeager was asked who he wanted for flight crew for the X-1 flight, he named Bob Hoover. Thus Bob Hoover flew chase for Yeager in a P-80 during the Mach 1 flight, and flew chase for the 50th anniversary in a F-16.

He left the Air Force for civilian jobs in 1948. This included test/demonstration pilot with North American aviation where he went on bombing missions with the F-86 over Korea.

Bob Hoover is most well known for his air show carrier, and record attempts. He most famous air show was his "Energy Management" routine in the shrike commander, a twin piston engine business aircraft, he not only put the aircraft through it paces (rolls, loops, et al), but he gave a grand finale shutting down both engines and executing a loop and an eight-point hesitation slow roll as he heads back to the runway. He touches down on one tire, then the other, landing on the runway.

He air show carrier was ended over medical concerns when he was unable to get the insurance required by most air shows.

Bob Hoover is concerned one of the founding fathers of modern aerobatics, he was described by Jimmy Doolittle as, "...the greatest stick-and-rudder man who ever lived." In the Centennial of flight edition of the Air & Space Smithsonian he was named the 3rd greatest Aviator in history.