Simply the Best
Is there an airshow fan alive who doesn't know the legend riding beneath that hat?
- By Debbie Gary
- Air & Space magazine, May 2010
“Ole Yeller” waltzes to a landing, with Hoover touching one wheel to the runway, then the other — his signature finale to an aerobatic performance.
Ted Koston
The first time I saw Bob hoover fly I was a new show pilot standing next to the great Curtis Pitts and hoping for words of wisdom. It was March 1972, and Pitts and I were watching the airplane he created perform at Miami’s Tamiami Airport. The sky was a frenzy of tiny Pitts Specials panting through snap rolls
and outside loops. It was noisy, and Pitts said nothing during the performance. Even after the airplanes landed and Hoover taxied out, Pitts was quiet—until Hoover, on takeoff, rolled the twin-engine Shrike Commander. It was as graceful and fluid as a cat stretching its back. The show tempo shifted from salsa to whipped cream. Pitts turned and grinned at me. “Have you ever seen anything so smooth?” he asked.
For the next 20 minutes, we watched North American Rockwell’s big, beautiful cross-country transport flow through giant loops and vertical climbs, four-point rolls and half Cuban eights. Two engines roared, then only one, but the airplane kept dancing. When the second engine stopped, the roar became a glider’s whoosh. The airplane swept past in a deadstick loop, followed by an eight-point roll, then waltzed down to the landing: LEFT two-three, RIGHT two-three, LEFT two-three—the wings banked steeply as one tire kissed the runway, skated, rolled, then lifted as the wings banked the other way, and that wheel skated, rolled…. “Now that’s flying,” Pitts said to me as Hoover, still without power, maneuvered up the runway and onto the taxiway, stopped precisely at show center, then climbed out in his business suit and waved his straw hat at the cheering crowd.
That Shrike and a bright yellow North American P-51 Mustang he called “Ole Yeller” were Hoover’s signature showplanes, and he flew them all over the world. But they represent only two of the more than 300 types of aircraft he flew, many of those in aerobatic demonstrations. In 1938, when he was 16, he flew his first show, entertaining his family with a Piper J-3 Cub. By the end of his career, 62 years later, he had flown more shows for more people than anyone else in history.
“He was the one that everyone wanted,” veteran airshow announcer Danny Clisham says. “He was able to take four distinctly different airplanes in one day and make them all dance in a different way from any other airplane.”
At 88, he is still in demand. Through a speaker’s bureau, he entertains audiences with stories revealing a skill so uncanny that it enabled him to perform low-level aerobatic demonstrations in dozens of types of airplanes the first time he flew them. Once, in Moscow, he was arrested for doing that because he upstaged the Soviet pilots in their own Yak-18s. During World War II, as a military test pilot evaluating aircraft delivered to bases in North Africa, Hoover entertained his fellow airmen by improvising an aerobatic routine in a newly arrived Lockheed P-38. Perhaps his most famous first-flight story takes place at the end of the war: After spending almost 16 months in a German prisoner-of-war camp, Hoover escaped, found a Fw 190, hopped in, and flew it to Holland.
After graduating from Army flight training in 1941, Hoover flew everything he could get his hands on. “Hell, I would fly an old Dodge truck if they put wings on the side,” he wrote in his autobiography, Forever Flying. He had such confidence and curiosity that he learned things about airplanes other pilots hadn’t figured out, such as why the Bell P-39 Airacobra tumbled—and how to recover when it did. In the 1950s, while he was working as an experimental test pilot for North American Aviation, he developed a dive- bombing technique for the F-86 Sabre and traveled to Korea to demonstrate the maneuver for pilots flying combat missions. He also taught them how to take off with heavy loads and from short runways. There had been several fatal crashes in the Sabrejet, and Hoover’s demonstrations, by several accounts, saved many lives.
Still at North American when the company sold the Air Force the supersonic F-100, Hoover flew a demo for the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds that convinced the team that the Super Sabre would be the perfect airplane for them.
Even with so many aircraft in his logbook, Hoover says he still regrets the one that got away: The Bell X-1S, and the 1947 flight that broke the sound barrier. He and Chuck Yeager were test pilots together at the Air Technical Service Command at Ohio’s Wright Field when Yeager was chosen for the flight. Hoover was picked as his backup. He has always said that what cost him the spot was getting caught that year making two inverted passes in a Lockheed P-80 at an Ohio airport.
He and Yeager were good friends, dogfighting over Wright Field every chance they got. Yeager recalled the period in his 1985 autobiography: “In January 1946, the skies over Wright Field were finally quiet. That’s because Bob Hoover and I were sitting in class at the test pilot school on base, taking a six-month course.”
As a test pilot, already famous for flying, Hoover became doubly famous for surviving: Engines exploding, ejection seats failing, wings buckling, control rods burning through, and rockets firing through the nose of an F-86 he was flying—all could have been fatal. In many of the incidents, the airplanes should have crashed, but thanks to Hoover’s luck and exceptional talent, he almost always got the aircraft back on the ground. In November 1950, assigned to test a new kind of F-86 control system, Hoover took off from Los Angeles, and the system immediately failed. The F-86 nose pitched straight up, and the airplane stalled and spun toward the runway. Thinking back on the incident today, Hoover says he thought to himself, “Oh boy, this is really going to hurt.” The controls were stiff as concrete, but he began to work with what he could move: the rudder, throttle, speed brakes, and flaps. “I kept trying to find the sweet spot where the forces are exactly the same on the top and bottom of the horizontal stabilizer,” he says.
For the next 40 minutes, he struggled to keep the airplane in that sweet spot. A number of times he almost crashed. But he was able to wrestle the F-86 inland to an 11-mile-long dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
In 1994, when he was 72, Hoover fought another kind of threat. Federal Air Surgeon Jon L. Jordan revoked his medical certificate, an action that suspended his solo flying privileges. Friends, fans, doctors, lawyers, and show pilots all over the world rallied to protest. Later, Jordan wrote, “Possibly in the entire history of the conduct of the airman medical certification program, no one decision has created more controversy.” On October 19, 1995, the Federal Aviation Administration reinstated Hoover’s medical.
In the interim, he passed the medical and flying tests for an airline transport rating in Australia and flew the Shrike Commander in shows there, but for several years “Ole Yeller” sat without him. The P-51 Mustang is famous for the torque of its 1,425-horsepower engine. When the pilot pushes the throttle forward on takeoff, or banks the airplane steeply for a knife-edge, or gives the fighter full power while its speed drops, it takes strong legs and lots of rudder to hold the nose straight. During his siege with the FAA, Hoover’s leg muscles took a holiday from the 40 years they had been fighting the P-51’s torque. After the hiatus, he flew “Ole Yeller” at Nevada’s Reno Air Races in 1996, a year after he got his medical back. “When I landed, everybody said, ‘That was the best flight you ever made,’ ’’ Hoover recalls. “Colleen, my wife said, ‘I bet you’ll never sell that airplane now.’ “I said, ‘On the contrary. That was my last flight in the Mustang.’ My knees were hurting so bad that I knew the time had come where I couldn’t handle the torque. I broke both legs during an accident in my test flying career and they had gotten much worse with age, so I had been taking lots of exercise to get my knees more strength. The torque with the Mustang is really enormous, and when you’re doing a knife edge, flying close to the ground, you boot the rudder even harder. It got my knees hurting so bad that when I landed, I couldn’t get out of the cockpit.”
Hoover sold the Mustang to John Bagley, founder of the Legacy Flight Museum in Rexburg, Idaho, who still flies it at airshows. In 2000, Hoover donated his Shrike to the National Air and Space Museum.
Hoover had flown the P-51 as the official pace plane of the National Championship Air Races from the very first race, in 1964, until 1990, and race fans loved him.
“At the Reno Air Races,” says Danny Clisham, “he performed in four different airplanes, flew the pace plane, warmed up the crowd before the race, and entertained them [after the last race] when the Unlimiteds were landing. In four days, he would make 28 different flights.”
That stamina had been Hoover’s trademark from the beginning. His boyhood dream was to be a fighter pilot, but when he paid $2 for his first 15-minute lesson, he discovered something horrible: Flying made him airsick. For almost a year, every flight nauseated him. When he finally got to fly solo, he chose an unusual course and it has defined his life. He decided to loop, roll, and spin the Piper Cub until his stomach was conditioned. It worked. By the time he got to Army Air Corps training, he was the best aerobatic pilot anyone had seen, and it set the course for his one-of-kind flying career.
When Debbie Gary is not flying, she writes from her home in a Texas airpark.
Comments (21)
Saw Bob Hoover fly at an airshow at Little Rock Air Force Base in the early 1960's in his P-51, along with the Thunderbirds in their F-100's. Talk about making an impression and a life long memory! Glad I saw him perform in that aircraft.
Posted by Don Dobbins on March 19,2010 | 08:43 AM
I have volunteered as a tour guide at the Rexburg Idaho Legacy Flight Museum for a while. It has been quite an experience being in close proximity of Old Yeller on a regular basis. The reactions of the people I'm giving the tour to when the are told about Hoover's escape in the Fw-190 has been very entertaining.
Posted by Jacob Nelson on March 19,2010 | 07:09 PM
On February 4 the Aero Club of Southern California honored Bob with the 2009 Howard Hughes Memorial Award. Normally a former honoree presents the award, but for Bob two stepped forward and we had the first dual presenters in the award's 31 year history - Neil Armstrong and Chuck Yeager.
Nissen Davis
President
Aero Club of Southern California
Posted by Nissen Davis on March 19,2010 | 12:47 AM
Debbie, thanks for sharing the amazing history of Bob Hoover. I have had the privilege of being a guest in the room with Bob Hoover many times but didn't know his full history. His story is beautifully written and inspiring.
Posted by Lyndi Tucker Taylor on March 21,2010 | 02:55 PM
I saw Bob perform in his Shrike Commander in Reading PA in the late '80's. I was enjoying the show, but really wanted to see the Thunderbirds and wasn't familiar with Bob. I was waiting for the big act and was unimpressed when this twin prop biz plane took off. What followed was the most amazing and improbable acrobatic display I've ever seen. There was literally stunned silence over the crowd as Bob finished his "Energy Management Routine" with both engines off. I sure found out who Bob was after that!
Get his autobiography "Forever Flying" to read more about the unbelieveable incidents and exploits of this aviation legend. Its very well written and a thoroughly enjoyable read.
Posted by rb on March 22,2010 | 12:10 PM
Bob Hoover is not "Simply the Best" pilot around--he is one of the best individuals around. I first met Bob in 1962 when he was with North American Aviation and he was instrumental, along with others, in helping to evaluate a new light weight headset that was being introduced at that time. Bob's support and critical comments were an essential ingredient to the success of this product. Thanks again Bob, keep on flying.
Posted by Stephen Spragens on March 22,2010 | 04:59 PM
My father in law was very good friends with Bob Hoover and I believe they used to fly Mustangs together. I actually am looking to get contact info for Bob Hoover. My father in laws name is Maj David K Gosser and he is a retired test pilot as well as a member of the Mach Duece club and the X society. Any help would be appriciated...
Posted by Kathleen Grace-Gosser on March 23,2010 | 01:19 PM
I saw Bob Hoover fly at the Twin Falls ID air show in the early 80's. What an amazing show! Bob told the crowd what he was going to do with the Shrike Commander and where he would stop on the taxiway. I guess the taxiway had a litle more incline than Bob thought. The Shrike Commander started slowing berfore he arrived at the intended spot. What did Bob do? He got out and pushed. How I wish I could sit with Bob Hoover, Chuck Yeager, and Bud Anderson for a day. What stories they all could tell. Sherwood Ringling Wendell ID
Posted by Sherwood Ringling on March 24,2010 | 09:30 AM
I had the priviledge of seeing Bob Hoover perform many times at the EAA conventions (now AirVenture) at Oshkosh. It didn't matter who had performed before him or how many times we'd see his act, when Bob Hoover taxied out, all eyes were on him. His flying is some of the most amazing airmanship I've ever seen. He is simply one of the best pilots to ever strap on an airplane and by all accounts, a fine gentleman, too.
Posted by Larry J on March 24,2010 | 12:13 PM
Bob Hoover is the Best Air Show Pilot EVER, but best of all, he is the nicest guy you could ever meet.
I have had the pleasure of talking with him in Australia and the US, and he has time for everybody.
For a pilot that has done so much, he is humble, and just down to Earth.
At Skyrace in Tasmania he did a talk, where he narated to file footage of his exploits, he had the crowd between raptures of laughing to outright awe.
HOOVER IS A LEGEND.
Thanks for the enjoyment.
Posted by John on March 25,2010 | 09:54 AM
General Yeager has honored Bob Hoover at various events including the recent Aerospace of Southern California Howard Hughes Award. While you all know that Gen Yeager thinks the world of Bob and that Bob Hoover is a great stick and rudder man, Gen Yeager also always takes time to include Colleen Hoover, Bob's wife, in those honors for all her support, help, kindness, courage, and patience. Bob is fortunate to have such a wonderful wife and life partner. She is a remarkable woman. EDITORS' NOTE: The commenter is the wife of General Yeager.
Posted by Victoria Yeager on March 25,2010 | 11:22 AM
I am the lucky fellow who bought "Ole Yeller" from Bob.
I received my check out from Bob in "Ole Yeller"and Have known him well for about 14 years. He is without excetpion the greatest pilot, the nicest gentleman, and in a a very humble man. His knowledge of aviation is amazing still after all of these years. Having the privilage the Fly "Ole Yeller" is like flying a National Monument.
John Bagley, Legacy Flight Museum
Posted by John Bagley on March 28,2010 | 11:57 AM
I saw Bob Hoover on his Shrike in Caracas, Venezuela when I was a kid and just had the honor to meet him last year in Reno. Bob's memory is sharp as his flying skills, he remembered very well his expedition to my country and the fellow Aero Commanders that shared their planes with him.
Kathleen Grace-Gosser, Bob is a very accessible man, you should have no problem reaching him. In Reno I talked to him twice in two days, he promotes his book on air shows, so just look up when is his next one and go and talk to him or Colleen who knows everyone that knows Bob too. If you need more help email me. Good Luck and great that our aviation hero is getting some coverage!
Posted by Peter Bichier on April 21,2010 | 02:32 PM
I live in São Paulo , Brasil and about 25 years ago
I saw Bob Hoover's performance with the Shrike Commander in an air show in São José dos Campos, where today Embraer builds its planes. Just Amazing!. He was and still is a great pilot. It seems to me that planes really "love to fly under his command". Any plane. Good to read about him.
Posted by Daniel G. Fiorotti on April 21,2010 | 07:25 PM
The first time I saw
Bob Hoover was at the South Weymouth Naval Air Station in 1963. I did not know who he was but sure found out. I have seen his show several times and have never been disappointed. I saw him fly the P-51, the OV-10, and the Shrike and have always been amazed, and then I saw him fly the Saberliner. I have never seen an airplane do what he did with the Saberliner. I have had my Twin Commander since 1981 and really love it and thought nothing could beat his show with the Commander, what a pleasant surprise. I have been lucky enough to get to meet him and have to agree that any person that has accomplished as much as he has and not have a big ego is a very rare person and one to be admired.
Jim Addington
Posted by James T. Addington on April 21,2010 | 12:02 AM
In the 1990's my then employer, American Eagle Insurance Company, was one of Bob Hoover's Air Show sponsors and, in return for this Bob agreed to sign autographs at our booth at the 1996 National Business Aircraft Association Convention. The stories he relayed to us about his flying feats had me spellbound. Imagine my excitement when Chuck Yeager, who was also at that convention, spotted Bob and came over to heartily greet him. I was priveleged indeed to talk at length with both these very fine men. Incidentally, when the Feds later took Bob's license from him on so called "medical grounds" (they alleged he had Alzheimers), I also got to meet his famous Attorney and fellow aviator, F. Lee Bailey, who successfully appealed the FAA decision and got Bob his license back.
Posted by Roddy McMullen on April 24,2010 | 08:58 AM
I first saw Mr. Hoover in the 60's at an airshow in south Fla. As a teenager who wanted to fly, i was forever impressed by the skill of this gentleman, and fueled with the desire to fly. All because of this man's performance. There will never be another like him. Ben Marion
Posted by Ben Marion on April 24,2010 | 09:10 AM
We helped Mr. Hoover push Ol' Yeller into it's tie down spot on the Tarmac at the Reno air races. It was either 1969 or 1970 (it's in my dad's Flight log), and in those days my Father and I would fly into Stead AFB in his Bellanca Cruisaire and camp next to our plane, while we enjoyed the weekend air-show/races. Mr. Hoover was a really nice and sincere man and complimented my father on his Bellanca, and what a fine airplane it was. I'll never forget my Dad grinning from ear to ear. At Reno this last year (2009), I bought Mr. Hoover's book in the pit area and he signed it and we had our picture taken together. I mentioned my dad's Bellanca and he still remembered what a fine airplane it was...He is a fine man, very humble and down to earth. That made my Reno air race weekend.
Posted by Tim J. Stahlke on April 30,2010 | 03:39 PM
"Simply the best" indeed! I've had the privilege of seeing Bob Hoover perform several times, mainly at the Paine Field Airfair in Everett, Wa., and nothing on this Earth comes as close to perfection as a Bob Hoover airshow. I was sorry to read that he is no longer able to fly the P-51, but perhaps some generous individual could have one outfitted with a Yaw Damper system to keep the control forces manageable. It wouldn't be cheap, but it would be worth it to see Bob Hoover at the controls of a P-51 again.
My favorite Bob Hoover story - indeed my favorite aviation story period - is Hoover's first test flight in the F-86 with the new hydraulically boosted control system, which was mentioned in the article, and deserves a much longer telling. I first read about it in a magazine many years ago, and it made such an impression that I can still remember most of the details today. I can't fit it in here, so I'll post it separately.
Posted by Dick Morris on May 7,2010 | 06:03 PM
(Cont.) Hoover taxied out to the runway, pushed the throttle forward, and when the plane reached flying speed he pulled the stick back, lifted off, and retracted the gear. He heard the gear thump into the wheel wells - and lost all control of the airplane! The elevator was frozen into a nose up attitude, so the plane entered an ever steeper climb, came to a dead stop with the nose vertical, swapped ends, and dove straight toward the ground. The plane pulled out of the dive a few feet above the runway and repeated the process.
The ground was screaming "Eject!, Eject!, Eject!" at him, but he knew he was too low. He also wanted to save the airplane so they could determine what went wrong.
Once he got control of the airplane, he headed for Edwards AFB, carefully got the plane set up on a long final approach, dropped the gear, and again went through another series of oscillations until he could get the plane re-trimmed. Once the plane got down into ground effect, the nose came up and the plane greased itself onto the dry lakebed so smoothly that the only way that Hoover could tell he was on the ground was a slight vibration. He said later that it was the smoothest landing he ever made.
Thanks to Hoover's remarkable feat it didn't take long to find the problem. The new hydraulic system controls were wired to a new ground stud in a wheel well. They neglected to check for clearance, so when the gear came up, it knocked off the stud, and the redundant hydraulic systems, which had ALL been wired to that one ground stud, failed, freezing the control surfaces.
They discovered another minor detail: Someone had forgotten to remove the safety pin from the ejection seat! Hoover couldn't have ejected if he had wanted to. He later confided that had he tried to eject, and discovered that he was trapped, he might have panicked and lost it. Had Hoover not decided to try to save the airplane, some other pilot might have died too before they found the problem.
Posted by Dick Morris on May 7,2010 | 06:43 PM
Didn't Mr. Hoover roll the first Boeing 707 during a demo flight?
Posted by Sam on September 20,2010 | 11:34 AM