 Throughout
his career, Hoover has flown thousands of demonstration
flights at air shows and other events around the world,
flight tested over 300 different types of aircraft, and
piloted almost every type of fighter aircraft. Many of
his test flights have been described as "flying the
feathered edge of the envelope."
Hoover was born in
1922 and learned to fly at Nashville's Berry Field with
the money he earned working at a grocery store. He enlisted
at a young age in the Tennessee National Guard and was
quickly sent to Army Pilot Training during World War II.
Upon completion of his pilot training he was sent to England
and soon after that to Casablanca following the Allied
invasion of North Africa. It was there that he began flight
testing all the different types of aircraft that were shipped
from overseas and assembled on site. He then obtained an
assignment with the 52nd Fighter Group stationed in Sicily,
one of only two Spitfire units in the entire Army Air Corps.
Hoover completed 58 missions before being shot down off
the coast of Southern France. He spent the remaining 16
months of the war in Stalag Luft 1, a German prison camp,
as a prisoner of war.
When Hoover returned to the US at
war's end, he was assigned to the Flight Test Division
at Wright Field. It was there that he flew captured enemy
aircraft as well as some of the latest aircraft being tested
by the now US Air Force. In 1948 he accepted a position
with General Motors as a test pilot for high altitude performance
testing of Allison jet engines and new, developmental propellers.
In 1950, Hoover was hired by North American Aviation to
conduct experimental testing on all models of the F-86
Sabre, FJ-2 Fury, and F-100 Super Sabre. During his early
days with North American, he demonstrated safe handling
and flying qualities of the F-86 and F-100 to front-line
American pilots all over the world. Furthermore, Hoover
flew combat dive-bombing missions with the Air Force squadrons
in Korea, demonstrating the F-86's combat capabilities
over enemy territory.
Bob Hoover was the first man to fly
the Navy's XFJ-2 Fury and T-28 Trojan. He also set a number
of world aviation records including three climb to altitude
records in a Turbo-Commander which was performed at the
Hanover Air Show in West Germany, 1978. Another coast-to-coast
record was set by Bob in a P-51 Mustang in five hours and
twenty minutes from Los Angeles, California to Daytona
Beach, Florida in 1985. Hoover also holds a number of world
records in jet aircraft.
Bob Hoover has received the Distinguished
Flying Cross, the Soldier's Medal, Air Medal, and Purple
Heart. He was presented the Aviation Pioneer Award as the
world's most notable, decorated, and respected living pilot
by Parks College in St. Louis.
In more than fifty years
of flying, Bob Hoover has performed many thousands of times
in more different types of aircraft, in more countries
and before many more millions of people than any other
pilot in the history of aviation.
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