Interview with Bob Hoover at the National Museum of the USAF April 2014

[@joevanseeters2873]

Bob Hoover was not only one of the greatest pilots of all time, but one of the greatest PEOPLE of all time! Such a humble and gentle man in his disposition and a friend and mentor to everyone he met. What an absolutely incredible life this man had. The Army originally wanted Hoover to be an instructor pilot due to his early identified skills as an incredibly gifted pilot. Hoover was a Bomber Pilot fought hard to instead become a fighter pilot and put his skills to use in that manner which he eventually got. Hoover was shot down over the southern coast of France on his 59th combat mission flying a Spitfire while assigned to the 52nd Fighter Group based in Sicily. His Spitfire was having mechanical problems and on February 9th, 1944, he was attacked and downed by an Focke Wulf 190 being flown by German Fighter Ace Siegfried "Wumm" Lemke, making Hoover's downing his 19th Victory. (Lemke had also shot down 3 other planes that day as well almost making "ace in a day") Hoover survived and was held as a POW by the German's for 16 months. Lemke went on to survive WWII with well over 70 aircraft shot down in over 300 missions. Hoover began planning his escape attempt as soon as he got caught. He said in an interview later in life that he didn't want to be shot down in the first place and certainly didn't want to be in a German POW camp! Near the end of the war in Europe, Hoover and two other POW's escaped during a POW camp riot and Hoover was one of only a couple of pilot's in history to steal an enemy's fighter plane (A Focke Wulf 190, one of the best German Fighters of WWII) and escaped from Germany. Hoover turned the tide on a German Mechanic who attempted to stop the three men, turned a gun on a mechanic and demanded he help him start the aircraft. This variant of the FW 190 they found was a single seat reconnaissance aircraft which had damage, but more importantly had a full tank of gas, so Hoover handed the gun to the other two POW's so they had some form of weapon to help them escape and after the mechanic helped Hoover start up the aircraft, he didn't even taxi, instead immediately slamming the controls forward and got the aircraft up to take off speed and flew away eventually landing in Holland. After a brief tense standoff between Dutch Civilians who wanted to enact some poetic justice on the German Pilot who just landed in their town. The Dutch didn't believe Hoover's incredible escape story. Eventually British solders intervened and Hoover proved his story was in fact true and he was rescued! Type in OV-10 Bronco with Hoover on KZbin to see him do aerobatics including his famous 16 point precision roll, 8 point roll, loops, diving, stalls, spins, and all kinds of other amazing feats.

[@walterheinen5298]

Saw him at Oshkosh and will never forget him shutting the engines down on his Commander and proceeding to do loops. Incredible. Then saw Yeager and Anderson fly mustang’s side by side at 73. This was all in the same day !! Incredible times that we will never see again.

[@garyfischer4357]

A legend. I remember this pilot from my childhood, going to airshows with my dad.

[@awuma]

Absolutely fascinating. Here he explains how overcoming his early chronic airsickness made him such a good "stick and rudder" pilot. His comments about how he became Chuck Yeager's wingman in the X-1 program are also noteworthy.

[@jgrokoest2419]

Why dont they have a CD or something one can buy of movie? I flew with him around 1970’s. We worked at NAR