South Bay history: Pilot Bob Hoover’s famous World War II flight is only part of his story

Robert Anderson “Bob” Hoover piloted more than 300 different planes during a lifetime dedicated to aviation, but perhaps his most unusual flight took place in a German Focke-Wulf Fw190 airplane in the waning days of World War II in 1945.

On Feb. 9, 1944, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Air Forces pilot was flying a Spitfire Mark V over the south of France on his 59th mission when he ran into German fighters. One of his fellow pilots was shot down. Hoover, in turn, downed the German pilot who’d attacked his comrade — and the chase was on.

He succeeded in eluding the remaining German planes until he ran out of gas over the ocean off Nice on the French coast. He had to ditch his plane in the waters, where he was captured. He spent more than a year in Stalag Luft 1, a German prison camp on the Baltic Sea. After two dozen unsuccessful escape attempts, he tried again during a riot that broke out at the camp.

This time, he managed to clamber over the fence and flee along with two other prisoners. They rode bicycles through the countryside until coming across an airfield filled with damaged and broken-down German planes.

Hoover discovered one reconnaissance plane, an Fw190, that, somewhat miraculously, not only had not been damaged but also had a full tank of fuel. He commandeered it, but once in the air, he had no way to notify potential Allied patrol planes that he was an American, not a German.

He also didn’t have navigational information.

Hoover decided to fly west and look for the windmills and tulip fields of Holland before landing. He found them, but his troubles didn’t end after he touched down. A group of Dutch farmers immediately surrounded him, thinking they’d captured a German pilot. Fortunately, Hoover was able to convince them he was part of the Allied forces.

Hoover, who lived in Palos Verdes Estates for more than 40 years, was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on Jan. 24, 1922. From his earliest days, he was enamored with flying airplanes, paying for flight lessons at nearby Berry Field as a teenager with money earned working at the local A&P grocery store.

In 1938, at his earliest opportunity, he joined the Tennessee Air National Guard, which was called into service at the beginning of World War II. Hoover remained in the military following the end of the war, continuing to test fly planes for the Army Air Forces, which became the U.S. Air Force in 1947.

He was party to another famous flight on Oct. 14, 1947, when he flew the chase plane for his friend Chuck Yeager during the first supersonic flight of the Bell X-1. Hoover also served as back-up pilot for Yeager during the Mojave Desert test flights.

While stationed at Wilbur Wright Field near Dayton, Ohio, following the war’s end, Hoover met and married his wife, Colleen. Their marriage lasted 68 years, until her death in 2016. Hoover left the Air Force in 1948, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his valor upon his discharge.

The couple moved to California, settling in a house on Via del Monte in PVE, where they raised their two children, Anita and Robert. In 1950, Hoover took a job with North American Aviation in El Segundo, which later became Rockwell International. He worked for Rockwell for 36 years.

Hoover continued his work as a test pilot, immediately turning his attention to North American’s F-86 Sabrejet fighter. The plane became a mainstay of the Air Force during the Korean War. Because of his civilian status, Hoover was barred from flying missions during that war, but he still managed to finagle his way into several bombing missions and other military actions during the conflict.

The F-86 flights were only the beginning. He continued to test military aircraft of all types during his tenure at Rockwell, traveling the country to explain and demonstrate the workings of dozens of planes to Air Force pilots.

During the peacetime years that followed, Hoover further enhanced his reputation – Gen. Jimmy Doolittle once called him “the greatest stick-and-rudder man who ever lived” – in a new forum: as a stunt pilot at air shows.

Unlike most such pilots, who wore military fatigues and flight suits on the tarmac, Hoover always dressed nattily in a coat and tie for his demonstration flights. He flew either his vintage bright yellow P-51 Mustang nicknamed “Ole Yeller,” or his Shrike Commander, a twin-engine business aviation plane manufactured by North American Rockwell.

His breathtaking aerial routines included loops, stalls, barrel rolls and other maneuvers, often concluded with a dead-stick landing. He performed the routines at air shows for 50 years, even surviving an attempt by the Federal Aviation Administration to pull his license following a failed medical exam in the early 1990s.

Hoover fought the FAA’s decision and won, performing for several more years before retiring from the air show circuit in 1999. He died at 94 from heart failure at Torrance Memorial Medical Center on Oct. 25, 2016.

In addition to the DFC, Hoover also was awarded the Soldier’s Medal for Valor, Air Medal with Clusters, Purple Heart and the French Croix de Guerre during his career. He was inducted into National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1988 and was made an honorary member of the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels and the Air Force’s Thunderbirds aerobatic teams, among his many other honors.

Sources: “Five Pilots That Reached Aviation Immortality: Bob Hoover,” by W. David Pond, Plane and Pilot magazine website, Oct. 27, 2022. Daily Breeze archives. Find A Grave website. Los Angeles Times archives. Palos Verdes Peninsula Press archives. Wikipedia.

Further reading: “Forever Flying: Fifty Years of High-Flying Adventures, From Barnstorming in Prop Planes to Dogfighting Germans to Testing Supersonic Jets,” by R. A. “Bob” Hoover, Atria Books, 1997.